Every now and then I find myself getting annoyed at these little refresh squiggles that the Visual Studio watch expression get if they potentially have side-effects. I reckon that's a good thing, however, sometimes I need to express a quick way to drill down some data structure and get at that specific value.
Format Specifiers in C# (see MSDN)
These format specifiers are for C# but some of these are language agnostic and some variations of these work with other languages.
There's more information on MSDN. But these are my favourite ones, the ones I try to remember. Because when I need them, I have know that I can use them.
| Specifier | Format | Value | Displays |
|---|---|---|---|
| ac | Force evaluation of an expression. This can be useful when implicit evaluation of properties and implicit function calls is turned off. * | ||
| d | Decimal integer | 0x0065 | 101 |
| h | Hexadecimal integer | 61541 | 0x0000F065 |
| nq | String with No Quotes | "My String" | My String |
* See Side Effects and Expressions.
And this is how you use them...
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Text,nq | string without quotes |
| source.Skip(2).First(),ac | The 3rd element of an enumerable source |
| 0xa,d | 10 |
| 10,h | 0x0000000a |
The d and h format specifiers are especially nice when you find yourself toggling Hexadecimal Display on and off. And as a bonus, If you'ven figured this out yourself, these expressions also work in the DebuggerDisplayAttribute string. Very handy.
