Comments on: Forcing VC++ Debugger to Display Pointers as Arrays

By: nikki

nikki — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:22:06 +0000

Oh sorry Steve, I hadn’t fully understood. I got it now.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:09:38 +0000

So they are! Very useful, thanks.

By: valentingalea

valentingalea — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:15:14 +0000

Those Tracepoints are available in VS 2005 too! Just right click on a breakpoint icon and tweek the When Hit…

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:39:46 +0000

You’re missing something.

We’re talking about pointers here. Any time you deal with a memory block full of floats, ints, whatever (something you’ll do a lot if you process things like vertex / index buffers), it’s useful to be able to browse the content just from a single pointer, AS IF it were an array.

By: nikki

nikki — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:32:27 +0000

Arrays? I almost never use arrays. Tell me I’m missing something.

By: tuan kuranes

tuan kuranes — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:17:35 +0000

Very nice list of tips&tricks along with a nice ‘watch’ codes list debugger variable :

http://www.catch22.net/tuts/vctips.asp

While we’re on C++ debugging tricks, replacing WIN32 horrible ‘assert()’ with one that actually break at the good place (meaning NOT inside win32 internals), still not cost anything in release, and with more capabilities :

http://powerof2games.com/node/10

By: Panter

Panter — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:20:09 +0000

I came across this two years ago (while writing a course on advanced programming techniques), this was a great discovery, nobody in my lab new this trick, so it is good you share it on your blog.. many people will read this which didn’t know this trick and will be very thankful!

Btw. I found it here (some other tips and tricks are there as well, although less useful for me ): http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/windev/visualstudio.html

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:31:49 +0000

@Dan: that way it will only break at that specific line when a condition is met, that’s not quite the same as breaking whenever a given data member changes.

By: Stodge

Stodge — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:16:32 +0000

Ahh you are wise Glasshopper!

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:11:44 +0000

@KungFoo: Right-click the breakpoint and select Condition.