<p>Is it possible to see the return value of a method after the line has been run and before the instruction pointer returns to the calling function?</p>

<p>I am debugging code I can't modify <em>(read: don't want to re-compile a third party library)</em>, and sometimes it jumps to code I don't have source to or the return expression has side effects that stop me being able to just run the expression in the <em>Display</em> tab.</p>

<p>Often the return value is used in a compound statement, and so the <em>Variables</em> view will never show me the value (hence wanting to see the result before control returns to the calling function).</p>

<p><strong>UPDATE:</strong> I can't use the expression viewer as there are side-effects in the statement.</p>

Tough one.  My experience, outside of Eclipse, is that if you might need to see the return value, it is best to assign it to a local variable in the function so that the return statement is a simple
```
return varname;
```
and not
```
return(some * expression || other);
```
.  However, that's not dreadfully helpful to you since you say you can't (or don't want to) modify or even recompile the code.  So, I don't have a good answer for you - perhaps you need to reconsider your requirement.