When do I use Step, Step Out, Next Statement, etc.

[Keith Breinholt]

Stepping is definitely one of the most confusing parts of stepping
through a functional language like XQuery. Stepping in XQuery is by
expression, not lines of code as you would in Java or C#. If you keep
this in mind it will begin to make some sense.

Descriptions of the stepping functions are something like this:

“Step” will step into a sub expression or to the end of the current
expression. This is the preferred method of stepping unless one of
the other methods make more sense.

“Step Out” will step to the end of the current expression… If you look
at the stack frame you will see what the current expression is and can
gauge where you will step to. In my code, the current FLOWR
expression can sometimes be the entire module. So use “Step”ping to
drill down into sub expressions and then “Step Out” to wind your way
back out. But keep in mind that if you are at the end of the last sub
expression of a parent expression you will step ‘out’ to the end of a
parent of all sub expressions that are at their end, which as we
observed could be the end of your module.

“Next Statement” Statements are import, declare and FLOWR statements…
anything that ends with a semicolon. Think of this as “I want to jump
to the statement after the next semicolon.”

“Step Function” Steps to the end of the current function. If you are
not in a function execution will continue until the request finishes
execution.

Revision 1.0.2 added some hover tips that should help. If you hover
over the “Step” link a popup description will say “Step to the
beginning or end of current expression.” Step Out says something like
“Continue evaluation to the End of the Current Expression.”

-Keith