Setting and Removing Watch Conditions

You use a watch condition to request a job breakpoint when the contents of a specified variable (or an expression that relates to a substring or an array element) is changed from its current value. Setting watch conditions is similar to setting conditional job breakpoints, with these important differences:

• Watch conditions stop the program as soon as the value of a watched expression or variable changes from its current value.
• Conditional job breakpoints stop the program only if a variable changes to the value specified in the condition.

The debugger watches an expression or a variable through the contents of a storage address, computed at the time the watch condition is set. When the content at the storage address is changed from the value it had when the watch condition was set or when the last watch condition occurred, the program stops.