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POVisual Studio debugger tips & tricks for .NET
 

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    <p>I've been working for years with VS's debugger, but every now and then I come across a feature I have never noticed before, and think "Damn! How could I have missed that? It's <strong>so</strong> useful!"</p> <p>[Disclaimer: These tips work in VS 2005 on a C# project, no guarantees for older incarnations of VS or other languages] </p> <h3>Keep track of object instances</h3> <p>Working with multiple instances of a given class? How can you tell them apart? In pre-garbage collection programming days, it was easy to keep track of references - just look at the memory address. With .NET, you can't do that - objects can get moved around. Fortunately, the watches view lets you right-click on a watch and select 'Make Object ID'. </p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/461/52518188cq3.jpg">watches view http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/461/52518188cq3.jpg</a> </p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>This appends a {1#}, {2#} etc. after the instance's value, effectively giving the instance a unique label. It looks like this: </p> <blockquote> <blockquote> <p><a href="http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/7351/11732685bl8.jpg">numbered instance http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/7351/11732685bl8.jpg</a></p> </blockquote> </blockquote> <p>The label is persisted for the lifetime of that object.</p> <h3>Meaningful values for watched variables</h3> <p>By default, a watched variable's value is it's type. If you want to see its fields, you have to expand it, and this could take a long time (or even timeout!) if there are many fields or they do something complicated.</p> <p>However, some predefined types show more meaningful information :</p> <ul> <li>strings show their actual contents</li> <li>lists and dictionaries show their elements count etc.</li> </ul> <p><a href="http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4808/37220487md1.jpg">meaningful info http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4808/37220487md1.jpg</a></p> <p>Wouldn't it be nice to have that for my own types? </p> <p>Hmm... </p> <p>...some quality time with .NET Reflector shows how easily this can be accomplished with the <code>DebuggerDisplay</code> attribute on my custom type:</p> <pre><code>[System.Diagnostics.DebuggerDisplay("Employee: '{Name}'")] public class Employee { public string Name { get { ... } } ... } </code></pre> <p>... re-run, and...</p> <p><a href="http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/926/79816018ha1.jpg">ta da! http://img60.imageshack.us/img60/926/79816018ha1.jpg</a></p> <p>There's a lot more info on the subject here: <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163974.aspx">MSDN</a></p> <h3>Break on all exceptions</h3> <p>... even the ones that are handled in code! I know, I'm such a n00b for not knowing about this ever since I was born, but here it goes anyway - maybe this will help someone someday:</p> <p>You can force a debugged process to break into debug mode each time an exception is thrown. Ever went on a bug hunt for hours only to come across a piece of code like this?</p> <pre><code>try { runStrangeContraption(); } catch(Exception ex) { /* TODO: Will handle this error later */ } </code></pre> <p>Catching all exceptions is really handy in these cases. This can be enabled from <em>Debug > Exceptions... (Ctrl-Alt-E)</em>. Tick the boxes in the 'Thrown' column for each type of exception you need.</p> <hr> <p>Those were a few forehead-slapping moments for me. Would you care to share yours?</p>
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    1. COThis is more a note-to-self post than a question, but maybe others will find it useful. Hopefully, I'll learn something new too.
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    2. COpossible duplicate of ["Hidden Secrets" of the Visual Studio .NET debugger?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/131263/hidden-secrets-of-the-visual-studio-net-debugger)
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