How can I display a byte array as a String in java's debug detail formatter?

Question

I'd like to write a simple detail formatter that displays byte[] data in the form of a String (using String.<init>([B) to do the dirty work).

However, I'm not sure how to find the class name for [B to use when creating the formatter. Is this even possible? Or, alternatively, is there another way to view byte arrays as strings in the debugger?

Answer 1

byte[].class

Answer 2

If your question is how would I get a string representation of a byte array of [0,1,2] to be "[0,1,2]", I would suggest you take a look at Arrays.toString(byte[])

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Arrays.html#toString(byte[])

Answer 3

The [B type can be retrieved with byte[].class.

Answer 4

I don't know how to get eclipse's detail formatter to automagically display byte arrays as Strings, but you can display a particular byte array by adding new String(byteArray) as a watch expression.

Answer 5

You couldn't add Detail Formatters for simple Datatypes like byte