Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

MSDN Blog Postings » Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

MSDN Blog Postings » Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:13:24 GMT

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re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Bruno Martínez — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:56:06 GMT

x flags = static_cast<x>( bit1 | bit2 | bit4 );

I don't think that's legal C++.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Norman Diamond — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:20:32 GMT

To Bruno Martinez: Why not? It looks to me like 5.2.9 (page 75 first paragraph) addresses exactly that.

To Vytautas Leonavičius:

I wish that the default display of values would be hexadecimal for DWORD, WORD, BYTE, pointers, etc., and decimal for UINT, int, long, etc. With enums the debugger would have to guess the intended usage, but in your example you could guess.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

C0 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:34:31 GMT

Nice.

I agree that the debugger is the single most used feature of Visual Studio. I could say VC's debugger is the only thing that keep me using MS Windows...

Speaking of feature request, is it possible to make autoexp using a scripting language or a dll? In other words, make visualization programmable. The autoexp used now is too weak IMO. If the visualization process is programmable, we could add such enum display trick ourself.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Tonci Tomic — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:36:07 GMT

If you are using template classes, even standard one from stl (vector, map), it is almost impossible to see function name in stack trace.

Is it possible to collapse template parameters in type of some template ? Thus, instead of:

std::vector< std::list<int, std::standard_allocator>, ...>::foo<... bla bla>

we should see only:

std::vector<>::foo<>

in stack trace with optional '+' sign near angled brackets expandable on click.

If it is to hard, I would be thankful for option "hide template parameters in watch windows", because, most of the times, I don't need that, space consuming, info.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Dave Johansen — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:15:55 GMT

I would love it if you could finally call methods that overloaded with both a standard and const version from the watch window.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

QbProg — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:33:05 GMT

Please support "operator overloading" in watch window, in particular [] and -> , since these are most important when using Smart Pointers and smart arrays!

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Paulius Maruška — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:42:42 GMT

Yeah, debugger is very nice in 2008.

I'm also very pleased to see a Lithuanian developer in Visual C++ team! :)

Go Vytautas! ;)

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

jschroedl — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:42:54 GMT

Nice tip! Thanks V. And interesting style of enum declaration - in all my years, I haven't seen it done that way.

John

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Bruno Martínez — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:05:39 GMT

You are right about the legality.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Jonathan Wilson — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:10:36 GMT

I would love it if I could add an expression like this:

a->b[i]->c[j] to the watch window where b and/or c are of type std::vector

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Robert Neumann — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:42:19 GMT

Good Job, Vytautas!

That's a really nice feature.

Thanks,

Robert.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

rolkA — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:07:51 GMT

I agree with Bruno, thats not legal C++ (actually it IS grammatically legal but this shouldn't be done like this). A combination of enum values have to be stored in the underlying type, int for example, because the result is not an "x" anymore...

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Norman Diamond — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:42:22 GMT

"the result is not an "x" anymore..."

But the result is still within range. I guess it's necessary to add section 7.2 paragraph number 6 (page 113 third paragraph) to section 5.2.9 paragraph number 7 (page 75 first paragraph).

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

stof — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:30:27 GMT

This does not work if (1<<31) is defined in the enum, not even if the underlying type is __int64!? Thats a shame really, because many enums in our code use this value. What gives?

And in principle, who would care if its legal c++ when the debugger allows for the expression "(x)flags" in the watch window?

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:29:40 GMT

Where are the GDI, ie. bitmap and graphics visualizers?

You would save yourselves a lot of work with those.

re: Visual Studio 2008 Enum Bit Flags Visualization

pete — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:52:45 GMT

The images don't seem to show up in Firefox (2.0.0.13)