Watching Values
Wing can watch debug data values, using a variety of techniques for tracking the value over time. Watching a value is initiated by right-clicking on a value in the Stack Data, Modules, or Watch tool and selecting one of the following ways to watch the value in the Watch tool:
Watch by Symbolic Path uses the symbolic path from locals() or globals() for the currently selected stack frame, and tries to re-evaluate that path whenever the value may have changed. For example, if you define a dictionary variable called myvar and watch myvar['foo'], the watched symbolic path is myvar.foo. This can be applied to myvar whether it's a dictionary or an instance with attribute foo. The Watch tool continues to show any value for that slot of myvar, even if you delete myvar and recreate it, change its type, or move to another stack frame with a variable of the same name. In other words, the value is tracked only by reevaluation of the symbolic path myvar.foo and is independent of the life of any particular object instance.
Watch by Direct Object Reference watches the selected value using its object reference. If you use this method to watch myvar, it tracks the contents of that instance, even if the symbol myvar goes out of scope or is reassigned a new value. The Watch tool continues to show the contents of the instance as long as it exists, until there are no more references to it in the debug process. In other words, the symbolic path to the value that was originally watched is irrelevant and only instance identity is used to track the value. This is useful for watching a particular instance as you step in the debugger, even if references to that instance go out of scope. Because it is meaningless to track immutable types like None this way, this option is disabled or enabled according to the value you select to watch.
Watch by Parent Reference and Slot combines the above methods by using the object reference to the parent of the selected data value and a symbolic representation of the slot within the parent in order to determine where to look for the watched value. For example, watching myinstance.attrib will store the object reference to the instance referenced by myinstance and the symbolic name attrib. The Watch tool displays the attribute attrib in the referenced object instance, as long as there are still references to that instance in the debug process. This means that reassignment of myinstance to another value does not alter what is displayed in the Watch tool. Only reassignment of the selected instance slot changes what is displayed.
Watch by Module Slot looks up a module by name in sys.modules and references the value within that module by symbolic path. Any change in the value, even across module reloads, is reflected in the Watch tool. This option is only available when clicking on values within a module, such as sys.path or os.environ.
For any of these, if the value cannot be evaluated because it does not exist, the debugger displays <undefined>. This happens when the last object reference to an instance is discarded, or if a selected symbolic path is undefined or cannot be evaluated.
The Watch tool will remember watch points across debug sessions, except those that make use of an object reference because those do not survive the debug process.
As in the Stack Data tool, values in the Watch tool can be displayed as an array or in textual form in the value details area. This is done by right-clicking on a value and selecting Show Value as Array or Show Value as Text.
