That's perfect - and removing the "breakpoint" is not an issue for me as it is normally conditional on a debug level, which I can change from pydb
if debuglvl>3: import pydb pydb.set_trace() 'in XXX: c to continue' The text line is a useful prompt (The example here is for pydb which works as well (and is more like gdb). On Oct 23, 12:07 pm, "Diez B. Roggisch" <de...@nospam.web.de> wrote: > bdb112 wrote: > > After a while programming in python, I still don't know how to break > > out to the debugger other than inserting an instruction to cause an > > exception. > > x=1/0 > > > In IDL one woudl write > > > stop,'reason for stopping...' > > at which point you can inspect locals (as in pdb) and continue (but > > you can't with pdb if python stopped because of an exception) > > > I am using ipython -pylab -pdb (python 2.5,2.6) > > Yes, I realise that I could start with the debugger, and set break > > points, but that can be slower and sometimes cause problems, and I > > like ipython's magic features. > > > Also, I don't know how to stop cleanly handing control back to ipython > > inside a program - e.g. after printing help text. > > I use > > import pdb; pdb.set_trace() > > Of course that can't be deleted as breakpoint - but it suits me well. > > Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list