erlang debugging (Beginner) io:format or what?

Question

As a beginner in erlang, I'm interested on tracing every step as possible in order to understand the flows happening in my programs.

The first tool at hand is filling every space with

io:format("~w~n", [MyDebuggingText]),

Now, my questions are:

• Is there some cool erlang module to make logging, tracing and debugging easier and orderly?

• Which is the more popular among seasoned erlang coders?

Thanks in Advance.

Answer 1

I've been relying solely on dbg for about 5 years now and so far it hasn't let me down. I've tried redbug and some others, but always come back quickly to dbg as it is ALWAYS there on the system. The only time it gets hairy is when you have lots of case statements, but that just means that you should refactor your code :) It is not every debugging tool that forces you to adhere to good programming practices!