Günter Kniesel | 7 Oct 14:20
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Inconsistent display of variable bindings in visual debugger


I just noted that the visual debugger displays different names for
the same internal variable in its "normal" binding view and in the "detail
binding view" that appears when double-klicking one of the bindings.
For instance, in the attached screenshot, _G4968, which appears in
both arguments, changes to two different names in the detail view
of each argument. The screenshot shows that in the detail view for
the first argument, _G4968 is displayed as _G1486.

This behaviour can be quite confusing. Worse, it might lead to errors.
When using the detail view to access large values and to assemble
a test call that exposes a problem, the consistency of variables
shared among the bindings will be lost. For instance, replacement
of _G4968 by two different variables, say A and C, leads to

  Arg1 = calls(a2,A), Arg2 = (f=B, C=D, ...), testcall(Arg1,Arg2).
                  ^                ^
instead of

  Arg1 = calls(a2,A), Arg2 = (f=B, A=D, ...), testcall(Arg1,Arg2).
                  ^                ^
Is this possibly a result of a recent change? I am pretty sure
that I used to cut and paste large values from detail views in
order to create test cases for identified bugs. Or did it only
work by accident because the different bindings didn't share any
variables?

Could this be changed (back) in a future release?

-- Günter

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Günter Kniesel                    http://www.cs.uni-bonn.de/~gk/
Institut für Informatik III                        gk <at> cs.uni-bonn.de
Universität Bonn
Römerstr. 164 (Raum A107)                      Tel (+49 228) 73-4511
D-53117 Bonn                                   Fax (+49 228) 73-4382


Gmane