Format specifiers in C# in the Visual Studio debugger

Bài viết
01/13/2024

You can change the format in which a value is displayed in the Watch window by using format specifiers. You can also use format specifiers in the Immediate window, the Command window, in tracepoints, and in source windows. If you pause on an expression in those windows, the result will appear in a DataTip in the specified format display.

To use a format specifier, enter the variable expression followed by a comma and the appropriate specifier.

Set format specifiers

We'll use the following example code:

{
    int my_var1 = 0x0065;
    int my_var2 = 0x0066;
    int my_var3 = 0x0067;
}

Add the my_var1 variable to the Watch window while debugging, Debug > Windows > Watch > Watch 1. Next, right-click the variable and select Hexadecimal Display. Now the Watch window shows the value 0x0065. To see this value as a decimal integer rather than a hexadecimal integer, add the decimal format specifier , d in the Name column after the variable name. The Value column now shows 101.

Screenshot of the Visual Studio Watch window with one line that shows my_var1, d with a value of 101 and a type of int.

You can view and select from a list of available format specifiers by appending a comma (,) to the value in the Watch window.

FormatSpecCSharp