breakpoint

breakpoint

A point in the processing of a program that the programmer wants to observe more closely by stopping the program and examining the contents of variables, buffers and memory. Part of the debugging function, lines of code are marked as breakpoints. When those instructions are about to be executed, the program stops, and control is passed to the programmer. After inspection, the programmer can step through the program one line at a time or cause the program to continue running either to the end, to the next breakpoint or until it crashes, whichever comes first. See watch variable and watchpoint.

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breakpoint [′brāk‚pȯint]

(chemical engineering)

breakthrough

(computer science)

A point in a program where an instruction, instruction digit, or other condition enables a programmer to interrupt the run by external intervention or by a monitor routine.

(industrial engineering)

In a time study, the end of an element in a work cycle and the point at which a reading is made. Also known as end point; reading point.

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(programming)

breakpoint - A point in a program that, when reached, triggers some special behavior useful to the process of debugging; generally, breakpoints are used to either pause program execution, and/or dump the values of some or all of the program variables. Breakpoints may be part of the program itself; or they may be set by the programmer as part of an interactive session with a debugging tool for scrutinizing the program's execution.