variable objects and registers

[Nick Roberts]

 > Sadly, neither Jason nor I will get a chance to do anything other  
 > that our already scheduled tasks till we're done with Leopard -  
 > sometime middle of next year or thereabouts.  We have a lot on our  
 > plates till then, and don't have any time available for this.  I  
 > can't really say what our plans will be after that.

OK, well thanks for the pointers anyway.

 > >> Another kind of useful addition along the same lines, we extended the
 > >> "FRAME" argument to -var-create so you can say:
 > >>
 > >> -var-create - +main.c:6 bar
 > >>
 > >> to create the variable object for bar in the scope surrounding line
 > >> 6.  This is necessary if you want to do variable values in tooltips
 > >> using variable objects.
 > >
 > > Yes, I see Insight uses variable objects for tooltips too.  What  
 > > advantage do
 > > they have over just using "print"?
 > 
 > The Xcode tooltips allow structure expansion & formatting the same  
 > way the locals display does.  Using varobj's for this makes the code  
 > uniform, and simpler.

Insight just prints the type as a tooltip for structures.  You seem to be
saying that in Xcode you can do this and choose to expand it.  Using "print"
in Emacs, everything is automatically expanded which I must admit is messy
with a large array or structure.  Perhaps -data-evaluate-expression could
be modified to print "--simple-values" or "--all-values" as -stack-list-locals
does.

Actually I see Insight gets it wrong, when one variable masks another with
the same name, just printing the current value.  I guess variable objects
allow such values to be correctly accessed, but they generally they seem
to be designed for tracking values rather than getting instantaneous ones
as with tooltips.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob