Kristoffer's tidbits : Visual Studio

Visual Studio Tip: Examining long strings while debugging

Kristoffer — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 19:53:23 GMT

Long strings can be a pain to examine in Visual Studio while you're debugging but in .NET projects you can easily write these to a file on the fly. If for example we want to examine the contents of string s, open up the Immediate Window (Ctrl+I) and type

System.IO.File.WriteAllText("C:\\Debug.txt", s);

Then open up C:\Debug.txt to see the entire string.

Navigate large solutions in Visual Studio quicker

Kristoffer — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 19:25:57 GMT

The one Visual Studio tip that everyone should know is how to quickly open a file in a large solution without having to remember which folder or project it's in.

Press Ctrl+Alt+A to open up the Command Window, then type open and the first few letters of the filename and you'll get a dropdown of all matching files in the current solution. Press Enter to open the selected file.