How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example - Help Center - Stack Overflow

How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example - Help Center - Stack Overflow

How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example

When asking a question about a problem caused by your code, you will get much better answers if you provide code people can use to reproduce the problem. That code should be…

• …Minimal – Use as little code as possible that still produces the same problem
• …Complete – Provide all parts needed to reproduce the problem
• …Verifiable – Test the code you're about to provide to make sure it reproduces the problem

Minimal

The more code there is to go through, the less likely people can find your problem. Streamline your example in one of two ways:

1. Restart from scratch. Create a new program, adding in only what is needed to see the problem. This can be faster for vast systems where you think you already know the source of the problem. Also useful if you can't post the original code publicly for legal or ethical reasons.
2. Divide and conquer. When you have a small amount of code, but the source of the problem is entirely unclear, start removing code a bit at a time until the problem disappears – then add the last part back.

Minimal and readable

Minimal does not mean terse – don't sacrifice communication to brevity. Use consistent naming and indentation, and include comments if needed to explain portions of the code. Most code editors have a shortcut for formatting code – find it, and use it! Also, don't use tabs – they may look good in your editor, but they'll just make a mess on Stack Overflow.

Complete

Make sure all information necessary to reproduce the problem is included:

• Some people might be prepared to load the parts up, and actually try them to test the answer they're about to post.
• The problem might not be in the part you suspect it is, but another part entirely.

If the problem requires some server-side code as well as an XML-based configuration file, include them both. If a web page problem requires HTML, some JavaScript and a stylesheet, include all three.

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