# Painless Debug.explain is NOT a println
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/painless-debug-explain-is-not-a-println/117146
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [January 26, 2018, 4:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/painless-debug-explain-is-not-a-println/117146 "2018-01-26T04:46:45Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@luis1](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/luis1)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2018, 4:46am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/painless-debug-explain-is-not-a-println/117146/1 "2018-01-26T04:46:46Z")
Painless Debug.explain is NOT a println because interrupts the flow. Is there any way I can print a variable without interrupting the scoring for the document? Thanks.
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### Author:  [@rjernst](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/rjernst)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2018, 5:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/painless-debug-explain-is-not-a-println/117146/2 "2018-01-26T17:05:19Z")
No, doing disk writes per document within a scoring script would be _very_ expensive. Debug.explain is a compromise that helps with debugging, but without affecting performance of a real script (eg you cannot accidentally leave it in and have performance issues because the script doesn't actually score when Debug.explain is present).
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2018, 5:05pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/painless-debug-explain-is-not-a-println/117146/3 "2018-02-23T17:05:28Z")
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