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.
Do not depend on precise value semantics in expressions that do more than just inspect data.