Debugging Mathematica Code

In various integrated development environments, such as Microsoft Visual Studio, there is an integrated debugger where you can step through code sections, examine the state of variables and figure out where things are going wrong. With more complex Mathematica programs a debugger would be an extremely valuable asset. I was wondering what people use to debug Mathematica programs?

Is Wolfram Workbench the only/best solution?

Answer

I think you got 4 choices:

Workbench. Probably the most useful of the debuggers.

Mathematica has a small debugger: Evaluation -> Debugger

There is DebugTrace from David (perhaps there are other packages)

Use Print, Trace(Scan)[], etc type of functions.

Comments

mathematical optimization - Minimizing using indices, error: Part::pkspec1: The expression cannot be used as a part specification

I want to use Minimize where the variables to minimize are indices pointing into an array. Here a MWE that hopefully shows what my problem is. vars = u@# & /@ Range[3]; cons = Flatten@ { Table[(u[j] != #) & /@ vars[[j + 1 ;; -1]], {j, 1, 3 - 1}], 1 vec1 = {1, 2, 3}; vec2 = {1, 2, 3}; Minimize[{Total@((vec1[[#]] - vec2[[u[#]]])^2 & /@ Range[1, 3]), cons}, vars, Integers] The error I get: Part::pkspec1: The expression u[1] cannot be used as a part specification. >> Answer Ok, it seems that one can get around Mathematica trying to evaluate vec2[[u[1]]] too early by using the function Indexed[vec2,u[1]] . The working MWE would then look like the following: vars = u@# & /@ Range[3]; cons = Flatten@{ Table[(u[j] != #) & /@ vars[[j + 1 ;; -1]], {j, 1, 3 - 1}], 1 vec1 = {1, 2, 3}; vec2 = {1, 2, 3}; NMinimize[ {Total@((vec1[[#]] - Indexed[vec2, u[#]])^2 & /@ R...

functions - Get leading series expansion term?

Given a function f[x] , I would like to have a function leadingSeries that returns just the leading term in the series around x=0 . For example: leadingSeries[(1/x + 2)/(4 + 1/x^2 + x)] x and leadingSeries[(1/x + 2 + (1 - 1/x^3)/4)/(4 + x)] -(1/(16 x^3)) Is there such a function in Mathematica? Or maybe one can implement it efficiently? EDIT I finally went with the following implementation, based on Carl Woll 's answer: lds[ex_,x_]:=( (ex/.x->(x+O[x]^2))/.SeriesData[U_,Z_,L_List,Mi_,Ma_,De_]:>SeriesData[U,Z,{L[[1]]},Mi,Mi+1,De]//Quiet//Normal) The advantage is, that this one also properly works with functions whose leading term is a constant: lds[Exp[x],x] 1 Answer Update 1 Updated to eliminate SeriesData and to not return additional terms Perhaps you could use: leadingSeries[expr_, x_] := Normal[expr /. x->(x+O[x]^2) /. a_List :> Take[a, 1]] Then for your examples: leadingSeries[(1/x + 2)/(4 + 1/x^2 + x), x] leadingSeries[Exp[x], x] leadingSeries[(1/x + 2 + (1 - 1/x...

What is and isn't a valid variable specification for Manipulate?

I have an expression whose terms have arguments (representing subscripts), like this: myExpr = A[0] + V[1,T] I would like to put it inside a Manipulate to see its value as I move around the parameters. (The goal is eventually to plot it wrt one of the variables inside.) However, Mathematica complains when I set V[1,T] as a manipulated variable: Manipulate[Evaluate[myExpr], {A[0], 0, 1}, {V[1, T], 0, 1}] (*Manipulate::vsform: Manipulate argument {V[1,T],0,1} does not have the correct form for a variable specification. >> *) As a workaround, if I get rid of the symbol T inside the argument, it works fine: Manipulate[ Evaluate[myExpr /. T -> 15], {A[0], 0, 1}, {V[1, 15], 0, 1}] Why this behavior? Can anyone point me to the documentation that says what counts as a valid variable? And is there a way to get Manpiulate to accept an expression with a symbolic argument as a variable? Investigations I've done so far: I tried using variableQ from this answer , but it says V[1...

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