Desired output at design time, Visual Studio 2008 (vb)

Question

Is it possible to choose to run specific code at design time? What i would like to be able to do is to display a list of enums that are used ina specific form and menu. Is this possible to do? Any response would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Not sure exactly what you want, but in the Immediate Window (CTRL + ALT + I) you can type this type of command:

? System.Enum.GetNames(GetType(System.AttributeTargets))

...which will produce this output:

{Length=16}
    (0): "Assembly"
    (1): "Module"
    (2): "Class"
    (3): "Struct"
    (4): "Enum"
    (5): "Constructor"
    (6): "Method"
    (7): "Property"
    (8): "Field"
    (9): "Event"
    (10): "Interface"
    (11): "Parameter"
    (12): "Delegate"
    (13): "ReturnValue"
    (14): "GenericParameter"
    (15): "All"

Just replace System.AttributeTargets with your favourite enum.

With a bit of creativity you can get all sorts of values from your code and also invoke methods in the same way (just quick examples here):

' print the value of a property '
? (New VBWindowsApplication1.Form1()).Text

' call some method '
? (New VBWindowsApplication1.Form1()).SomeMethod()

Of course there is a limit on how complex operations you can do here, but for simpler debugging purposes it works well.