| ★ APPLICATIONS ★ PROGRAMMATION ★ KWIKREF/X ★ |
KWIKREF/X (Amstrad Action) | KWIKREF/X (Amstrad Computer User) |
SPOT THE REFERENCE Programming need never be painful again, thanks to a little device from Parimgold. How many times have you sat back in your chair, eased away the pains in your back and run your latest creation, only to pull out your hair in desperation as the little buggy-poos start appearing before your eyes? Too many times to mention? Yes, I thought as much. My own programming experience could have told me the answer to that question in a flash. The trouble is, when you spend painstaking hours working over one of your own creations, or even when you've been struggling over a particularly long type-in, the last thing you want to do when you've finished, is spend another couple of hours de-bugging it. However, when you type in the old run command and the bugs start cropping up, you suddenly wish you had. Especially if you forgot to save the proggie first, (1 know, I've done it as well). The whole point is, that just one single slip when developing or entering a program, can lead to endless hours of frustration trying to pinpoint that error. It can even ruin a whole project. Now, however, the answer to every programmer's dreams seems to be at hand, with a seemingly innocuous little program from Wiltshire based Parimgold. What does it do? Well, quite simply, it takes the hard work out of checking your program for potential bugs, highlighting particular danger areas, at a speed that'll leave you quite green with envy. As a development tool for BASIC programmers, KWIKREF/X is an absolute essential. It's use is simplicity itself. All you do is make sure you save your program first and foremost. Then, run the Kwikref program and wait for the prompt. Then, just enter in the name of your file and, in a matter of seconds, you'll get a full report on the lowdown of your program which you can print to screen or printer, or save to disc. 'This information packed report includes a sequenced list of all the variables within your program, alongside all of the line numbers in which they occur. What could be easier than that, when seeking out a problem? Lines in which a value is changed are clearly marked for special attention, narrowing down your problem search that little bit more. On a separate listing, a further table of lines is given in which other lines are referred to, creating, in effect, a total cross-referencing grid from which to work. For the time it takes to produce all this material, Kwikref has got to be a bargain at just £12.95. Ok, so it won't write your program for you but, as any programmer will certify, anything that can help in debugging is worth its weight in gold. By printing off the report table to paper, cheeking down the list against your program should help to iron out most of your problems. What more needs to be said? Basically, if you like programming, you're going to love Kwikref. Well done Parimgold, for an invaluable piece of software. ACU |
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