One of the annoyances I've faced when debugging on macs native IDE, xcode, is that the debbugers ability to read through recursive pointers - ie, a pointer pointing at a pointer pointing at a pointer pointing at data I want to read - is limited to around 4 'recurses', after which it will show the pointers structure but will show every property in as containing no data. In actual projects, these pointers are normally pointing at classes that contain further pointers.
This can lead to circumstances where the debugger will not display the data in std::string, will show std::vectors as empty - it has the ability to read through these natively under less complex circumstances - and other assorted issues . Before I figured this out I spent a long time trying to discern why my variables had suddenly gone blank.
This was a long time ago and I have since gotten used to it, but I feel inclined to ask about it now;
EDIT:
I am using xcode 3.2.2, I might try upgrading to the latest and see how that goes.
Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a bug in the IDE, or a limitation? Is there an options file I can modify to increase its level of inlining? Is there some apple developer page containing information on this? (I have spent some time googling)