Compiled Expressions

TotalView compiles, links, and patches expressions into the target process. by replacing an instruction with a "branch out" instruction, relocating the original instruction, and appending the expression. This means that the target thread executes this code with the result being that evaluation points and conditional breakpoints execute very quickly. (Note that conditional watchpoints are always interpreted.) And, more importantly, this code does not need to communicate with the TotalView host process until it needs to.

If the expression executes a $stop intrinsic, TotalView stops executing the compiled expression. At this time, you can single-step through it and continue executing the expression as you would the rest of your code.

Stopped Execution of Compiled Expressions

If you plan to use compiled expressions, you may need to think about allocating patch space. For more information, see Allocating Patch Space for Compiled Expressions.