Variable Format Changed In Open Workspace

[d.]

A bunch of years ago I complained to NI that while you're debugging and you set a variable format to what you want to see, CVI changes that format back to what it wants to show whenever you stop running.  I **FINALLY** got NI to agree that this was a tremendous debugging headache, and the FINALLY fixed it.  But somewhere along the way to CVI 2013, NI broke this again.

For example, I do a lot of work on arrays of data.  The data is not ASCII but hex data that can be interpretted only if you know what to look for (as I do).  But that data makes no sense at all if you look at it in decimal.  So every time I run, I have to go back to my watch window and select every hex variable I want to look at (arrays, indexes, etc.) and change the format to what I want to see.

NI, why did you break this, and can you fix it again?

Thanks,

Dave

[Basil-B]

Hi D. 

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I am an applications engineer who can bring this up to the relevant developers. Can you send me some instructions for how to replicate this using one of the CVI shipping examples? That way we can do it on a piece of code that is common to all CVI versions and it will make it easier for me to escalate this to a developer. My understanding now is that you changing the format works, but it reverts back to the original format after you stop running. 

[d.]

Hi Basel,

It appears this happens not only when I stop then restart debugging, but also while stepping.

Here's what I did:

Create a global array, such as:

array[] = {0xaa, 0xbb, 0xcc, 0xdd, 0xee};

Then in my source code, I had a for loop such as:

for(i = 0; i < 5; i++)

{

  // do stuff here not related to array[]

}

I set a breakpoint on the for loop.  Ran in debug mode to the breakpoint.  Changed the format of array[] from decimal to hex, then stepped a couple of times and CVI changed the format from hex back to decimal.

That is very irritating.

Thanks,

Dave

[d.]

Oh, I forgot to say that I added array[] to a watch window after the breakpoint but before changing the format (of course).

[Basil-B]

Hello,

Ok thanks for letting us know. The relevant developers have been informed and they are actually already aware of this and are working on it at the moment. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

[Johannes_T]

Hello Dave!

Due to recent internal changes in CVI, this feature is no longer supported for the moment.

However, this issue has been brought to our attention and we will take this under consideration for a future CVI release.

You can also track the issue with the following ID: 443084.

Thank you for your post and sorry for the inconvenience!

[d.]

That is HORRIBLE!  NI has made it much harder to debug a CVI application.

[D-Cubed]

This issue has been fixed in LabWindows/CVI 2013 SP1, which can be obtained at ni.com/downloads.