Path Search Options Dialog

The path search options dialog is displayed after clicking the

[Find path between two selected nodes] button in the heap walker graph view.

There are three optional consecutive passes when searching for a path:

Directed path from first to second object
Find a path of outgoing references from the first object that you have selected to the second object that you have selected.
Directed path from second to first object
Find a path of outgoing references from the second object that you have selected to the first object that you have selected.
Undirected path
Find any kind of connection between the two selected objects even if the direction of the path changes in between. This works well for objects that are closely related, for example objects that have a common holder that references them both through a low number of outgoing references.
If the two objects are not closely related, a found path will likely involve class objects and stack frames and may be of little practical use. That is why this option is not selected by default.

JProfiler starts the search for the first selected path type and stops as soon as it finds a path. For large heaps the search can take a long time, so if you know that there is no direct path between the objects or that you are only interest in one direction, you can disable the other options in order to save time. If no path could be found, an error message is displayed.

Similar to the path to GC root search, the search stops at class objects by default. Deselect the Stop search at classes check box only if you have class loader problems, otherwise the found paths can cross classes arbitrarily for undirected paths. Also, weak reference types that were excluded in the heap dump options are not followed be default. If you are interested in paths along these weak reference types, you can enable them in this option dialog.