DEBUG WATCH MECHANISM AND METHOD FOR DEBUGGING A COMPUTER PROGRAM

A watch signature for a debug watch mechanism indicates one or more allowable events, which represent allowable accesses to a watched variable. The allowed accesses implicitly include thread information by limiting the allowable operations to a single thread that first performs an allowed operation. Any operations on the watched variable that are caused by a different thread, and any operations that are caused by the same thread other than those specified in the watch signature will create a notification that an unauthorized operation on the watched variable has occurred. The debug watch mechanism of the present invention thus does not notify the user for expected operations on the variable, but provides notification for other events that do not fall within the anticipated behavior of the computer program as specified by the watch signature.