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The documentation should compare and contrast Watch, Inspect and Display. It took me a while to figure out that Inspect inspects certain objects, whereas Watch watches certain variables. (If I'm wrong about that, it just underscores the need for an explanation :-) The difference isn't obvious since it only becomes relevant once you leave the stack frame from which you performed Inspect or Watch, and it isn't indicated in the view. (I'll submit the latter as a separate feature request.) The difference between these two and Display is a little more obvious but should also be explained in the documentation. The explanation of Display (at least the one you find if you enter "Display" in the help search field) is minimalistic and reminiscent of MS help files: "You can type an expression in the Display view and then use the Display command to display its value." It should mention how expression values are converted to strings (toString()? detail formatters? special cases for arrays?) I couldn't find anything about Watch expect brief entries in "New features" sections.
Sorry, I take that back -- of course Watch and Inspect have different icons in the Expressions view -- but my suggestion that the difference be explained in the documentation stands.
As of 3.6 RC4 the doc looks good to me. Please reopen if you still miss something.
The doc has certainly made great strides since I opened this bug, but most of the problems I was reporting persist. After spending several minutes searching the help in various ways, I haven't found anything that clearly explains the difference between Watch and Inspect. If I search for "watch" and "inspect", I only find brief pages (entitled "Add Watch Expression" and "Inspect Selected Variable", respectively) that explain that I can "create a new watch expression and add it to the Expressions View" and "create an inspect expression associated with the selected variable and add it to the Expressions View", respectively.They both link to a page entitled "Expressions View", which offers a bit more information but likewise uses the terms "watch expression" and "inspect expression" as if they had already been defined, but I couldn't find them defined or explained anywhere. These terms should link to pages called "Inspect expression" and "Watch expression" that define these terms (and link to each other under "Related concepts"). However, the term "inspect expression" is actually a bit misleading. You can inspect an expression, but the result isn't really an "inspect expression", it's a *value* that is then displayed -- though the display may change if the value is an object reference, there is no longer an expression involved at this stage. Also, I still couldn't find anything about how expression values are converted to strings for "Display" (toString()? detail formatters? special cases for arrays?). P.S.: After searching some more I found a page called "Expressions" that contains the sentence "A watch expression is an expression that is repeatedly evaluated as the program executes." This has the form of a definition of a watch expression, but a) it's in the Programmer's Guide, not the user guide, and talks about IExpression etc., and b) it doesn't really clarify the difference between a "watch expression" and an "inspect expression". What's slightly confusing about this difference is that both show changing things in the expressions view, but what the "watch expression" shows changes because the expression gets reevaluated, whereas what the "inspect expression" shows changes only if the result of the expression was an object reference and the object changes. This is straightforward once you figure it out, but it's not trivial to figure out without an explanation. Two related things I noticed while writing this that may or may not warrant opening a separate bug: -- There are help pages called "Inspect Selected Variable" and "Inspect Selected Statement". These both appear to be misnomers, since it's not statements but expressions that are inspected, and a variable is just a special case of an expression, so it seems there should be only one of these pages and it should be called "Inspect Selected Expression". -- The page "Display View" appears to be out of date; e.g. there's an entry "Inspect Result", but in my menu the entry is called just "Inspect".
Sorry, I forgot to compare versions -- I'm using Version: 3.4.1, Build id: M20080911-1700 -- I'll look at 3.6 RC4 as soon as I get a chance.
I've now downloaded Eclipse 3.6.0, Build id: I20100608-0911, and found that what I wrote in comment 3 applies to this version as well.
OK, thanks for checking. Moving to Debug to improve the doc.
