Micro Focus Visual COBOL 2.3 Update 2 for Visual Studio 2015 > Developing Applications in the IDE > Debugging COBOL Applications > Debugging Scenarios in Native COBOL > Break on Data Change

Tracing Memory Corruption with COBOL Watchpoints

Native code applications can cause memory overflows by occasionally writing in memory when they should not. You might not be able to locate the line of code that is responsible for the overflow and the only way to find the problem is to watch the area of memory.

Restriction: The following applies to native code only.

Your COBOL development system provides COBOL watchpoints to help you track memory corruption. COBOL watchpoints are a type of breakpoints that you set on individual data items and not on lines of code. They enable you to watch an area of memory associated with the particular data item. When the memory changes, debugging stops on the line that immediately follows the line on which the data has changed.

You can set watchpoints () on data items in any section of the code directly from the editor.

The COBOL watchpoints are associated with the Watchpoints (Native COBOL) window (show by clicking Debug > Windows > COBOL Watchpoints).

Shows a list of the watchpoints that have been set in the code.
Enables you to add new watchpoints, disable or delete the existing ones - , , , .
Highlights the watchpoint that has been hit.
Displays the values of the data items in decimal or hexadecimal format and their types.