Problems Handling Values
Wing's debugger tries to handle debug process data as gently as possible, in order to avoid entering into lengthy computations or triggering errors in the debug process. Even so, not all debug data can be shown on the display. This section describes each of the reasons why this may happen.
Huge Values
Wing may consider values too large to handle if it thinks that packaging the value for transfer to the IDE would hang up the debug process. These values are displayed in the form <huge type 0x803ca872> in the Stack Data tool.
Some values that are too large for display in the Stack Data tool may still be viewed as arrays by right-clicking on the value and selecting Show Value as Array. Arrays are loaded incrementally according to what is visible on screen, and thus are less subject to size thresholds.
An alternative available in Wing Pro for viewing large data values is to enter expressions into the Watch tool or Debug Console, in order to view parts of the data without transferring the whole value to the IDE.
The thresholds that are used to determine whether a value is too large to display may be set in the Debug > Data Display > Huge List Threshold and Debug > Data Display > Huge String Threshold preferences. The former controls how large len(value) may be and the latter controls how long a string may be. Setting these preferences higher may increase data transfer times and may require also increasing the Debugger > Network > Network Timeout preference to prevent timeouts.
Data Handling Errors
Wing may encounter errors during data handling because the inspection and packaging process may call special methods such as __cmp__ and __str__ in your code. If these methods have bugs in them, the debugger may reveal those bugs at times when you would otherwise not see them.
The rare worst case scenario is crashing of the debug process if flawed C or C++ extension module code is invoked. In this case, the debug session is ended.
More common, but still rare, are cases where Wing encounters an unexpected Python exception while handling a debug data value. When this happens, the value is displayed as <error handling value>.
These errors are not reported in the Exceptions tool. However, extra output containing the exception being raised can be obtained by setting the Debugger > Diagnostics > Debug Internals Log File preference. Or, in Wing Pro, try inspecting the value with the Debug Console.
Options that can prevent some types of data handling errors are documented in Advanced Data Display.
Opaque Values
Wing may treat values as opaque if they cannot be converted into a form that can be displayed in the IDE. This happens only rarely for data types defined within C/C++ code, or if a value contains certain Python language internals. Opaque values are denoted in the form <opaque 0x80ce784> and cannot be expanded further. In Wing Pro you may be able to use the Debug Console to access them (for example try typing dir(varname)).
Value Timeouts
Wing may time out handling a value when packaging it hangs up the debug process. The debugger tries to avoid this by carefully probing a value's size before packing it up. In some cases, this does not work, causing the debugger to wait for the duration set by the Debugger > Network > Network Timeout preference and then displaying the value as <network timeout during evaluate>.
Managing Value Errors
Wing remembers all debug data handling errors that it encounters and stores them in the project file. These values will not be refetched during subsequent debugging, even if Wing is quit and restarted.
To override this behavior for an individual value, use Force Reload in the right-click context menu on the value.
To clear the list of all errors previously encountered, so that all values are reloaded, use Clear Stored Value Errors in the Debug menu. This operates only on the list of errors known for the current debug main entry point, if a debug session is active, or for the main entry point, if any, when no debug process is running.
To avoid reoccurrence of more severe data value handling errors after clearing stored value errors, see Filtering Value Display.
