Multi-line viewport in Visual Studio 2010?

Question

When debugging XML, it’s a pain to touch the Text / XML visualizers in the viewport to see the full value of the XML string variable. The look windows in Visual Studio seem to be limited to one line.

Is there a way to constantly "monitor" the value of a multi-line variable during debugging? It is not necessary to be in the viewport, I suppose, but I want to see the value of the XML string, and the renderer windows are modal.

Answer 1

This is not very pretty, but one of the ways I came across is to put a string address in a memory window that can display text characters. Open one of the memory windows from the Debug menu: Debug \ Windows \ Memory. You can then enter the address or name of the variable, or simply double-click on the variable and drag it into the address field in the memory window.

Answer 2

What you can do is modify autoexp.dat so that it first displays the hash of the string, so at least you know when the string changes. Thus, you do not need to open the visualizer window so often. Of course, this will not work when a multi-line string is constantly updated.

Answer 3

I know this question asks a question about Visual Studio 2010, but in Visual Studio 2013 you can right-click a string of string variables in the Auto / Locals / Clock panel and select Add Parallel View . This will give you a modeless multi-line representation of the string value variable.