A breakpoint counter is associated with each breakpoint. When the breakpoint is created, the counter is set to zero; each time the breakpoint is encountered the counter is incremented by one. All breakpoint counters are set to zero when the program is reloaded.
If a skip count is specified, a breakpoint skip counter is set to the value specified, causing the breakpoint to be skipped that number of times. Once the breakpoint skip counter is set, it remains in effect until its value decreases to zero.