Question

I’ve tried creating a breakpoint within a class definition, stopping on the message sent to an object instance, hoping it would then jump to the class code and allow me to walk through line by line and see the values of the local variables.

However, I’m going to venture out and say “no, this should not be possible”, as there could be multiple instances of the class in memory. If someone could give a better explanation, that would be grand.

(As a side note, my alternative is excessive NSLogging of the runtime data.)

Answer 1

Yes, it is possible! You can add a condition to a breakpoint:

http://d.pr/yZVB+
http://d.pr/pWOB+

The program will only pause at this breakpoint when the condition is satisfied. You could choose a condition such as self == _myGlobalInstanceOfInterest.

If you don’t want to store the instance in a variable, you might, for example, start the breakpoint without a condition — and then when you figure out which instance you want as the program is running, use p myObject to get the address, and then just set the condition to use the that address (such as self == 0x8badf00d).