Depending on the problem, there might be other tools that lie between 'source code' and 'documentation' on the readability-versus-accuracy scale. I'm specifica

Depending on the problem, there might be other tools that lie between 'source code' and 'documentation' on the readability-versus-accuracy scale. I'm specifically thinking of strace, which I've used to diagnose problems that I was having with apache and chromium, among others. I don't think I would have got anywhere from reading the source. lsof is another, though I can't offhand think what I've used it for. If you do find yourself in the source code, being willing to play around with it is invaluable for working out what's going on. If nothing else, you can insert a printf to confirm that you're looking in the right place.