See substring in debug watch

Question

Is it possible to see a substring of a string when looking a string in the Watch window during a debugging session?

Answer 1

Yes - just watch

text.Substring(1, 15)

or whatever.

What happened when you tried this?

EDIT: "doesn't work" isn't really a description of what happened. I've just tried this myself in VS2008, and it worked fine. The value greys out when you step, but there's a little "refresh" button on the right hand side of the value box... when you click that, it will re-evaluate the expression.

If that's not happening for you, please describe what is happening for you.

Answer 2

I tend to use the Immediate Window for this sort of thing, but as Jon Skeet has said you can also do it directly in the Watch Window.

Answer 3

sure, just put in a new watch entry with the substring you want to see :-