LabWindows/CVI Tip: Using data tooltips in debugging

[RobertoBozzolo]

If Enable data tooltips option is checked in Options >> Environment panel, some useful tools are enabled during debugging of an application.

When execution is stopped due to a breakpoint, hovering the mouse over a variable will result in a small yellow balloon showing the variable value at that moment, like in this picture:

If the value shown is in bold, like in the example, you can click on it and directly type in a new value if you need so: this is a lot faster that going through the variable window via Shift-F7 or Window >> Variables menu option, and does not consume part of the screen to display the variable window.

If you highlight some text in the source code, the tooltip can evaluate expressions in the region highlighted and return the result. Consider as an example this code in which the active cell of a table is returned by GetActiveTableCell ( ) function:

• if no text is highlighted the tooltip returns the memory address of "cell" variable
• if "cell.y" is highlighted the tooltip shows the value of the struct element (cell.y = 1)
• if "cell.y - 1" is highlighted... well, you see!

[ndo]

Very useful tip.  Thank you.