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What does "investigate" mean in programming?
investigate is one of the most common terms in software development. This guide explains what it means, how it is used in practice, and why it matters, with real examples from the developer world.
Definition
To examine a problem carefully and systematically to find its cause. Investigation involves reproducing the issue, gathering evidence from logs, and forming and testing hypotheses.
Example
"Investigate the production error before pushing a fix so you understand what actually went wrong."
Word forms
| Form | Type | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| investigate | verb (infinitive) | To examine a problem carefully to find its cause | "I will investigate why the tests are failing on the CI server." |
| investigated | past tense | Already examined carefully to find the cause | "I investigated the outage and found it was caused by a memory leak." |
| investigating | gerund | In the process of examining a problem to find its cause | "I am still investigating the intermittent failures." |
Related terms
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