 <p>The reason beyond that is that the bytecode (.class files) used by your Eclipse debugger doesn't contain any information about method parameters name. That's the way the JDK is compiled by default.</p> <p>The Eclipse debugger implements a workaround for method parameters, naming them "arg0", "arg1", etc. and thus enabling you to inspect them in the "Variables" view. Unfortunately, I don't think there is such a workaround for local method variables...</p> <p>Some other tickets in StackOverflow advise to rebuild yourself the JRE based on source code of the JDK, e.g.: <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10266560/debugging-not-able-to-inspect-the-variables">debugging not able to inspect the variables</a>.</p>