The Java Expression Evaluation in dbx Commands

The Java expression evaluator used in most dbx commands supports the following constructs:

• All literals

• All names and field accesses

• this and super

• Array accesses

• Casts

• Conditional binary operations

• Method calls

• Other unary/binary operations

• Assignment to variables or fields

• instanceof operator

• Array length operator

The Java expression evaluator does not support the following constructs:

• Qualified this, for example, <ClassName>.this

• Class instance creation expressions

• Array creation expressions

• String concatenation operator

• Conditional operator ? :

• Compound assignment operators, for example, x += 3

A particularly useful way of inspecting the state of your Java application is using the watch facility in the IDE or dbxtool.

Depending on precise value semantics in expressions that do more than just inspect data is not recommended.