Imagine there’s a lion in a desert. You need to cage the lion or you will be eaten. In this example the desert is your code and the lion is a bug that you’re having a hard time pinning down.

There are many ways to trap a lion. Here’s one.

Build a fence dividing the desert in half going North to South. Assuming the lion is not in the South section, divide the North section in half with a fence going East to West. Repeat the process until your fence is arbitrarily small and has become a cage trapping the lion.

But how does this relate to code?

Say you have a relatively large file that executes fine, but introduces a bug into your larger system. You suspect that something has gone wrong with the large file, but you’re not getting an error implicating a specific line.

Cut it all right in two.

Comment out half the code in your large file and try to reproduce the bug. If you reproduce the bug, repeat the process as necessary until you isolate the line producing the problem.

I learned about this approach for bugsleuthing from the bot in #emacs on freenode. It’s particularly useful for tracking down bugs in large configuration files. There’s a list of humorous lion-trapping algorithm examples here.