When a process being debugged execs a new executable, the debugger iterates over exec-handling-list to match the original process name (that is, the name of the process before it called exec) against each regexp in the list. When it finds a match, it uses the corresponding action, as follows:
Action
Description
halt
Stop the process
go
Continue the process
ask
Ask whether to stop the process
If a matching process name is not found in the exec-handling-list, the value of the TV::parallel_stop CLI state variable preference is used.