How do I see the contents of Qt objects QByteArray during debugging?

Question

My program use some variables of type QByteArray to contain data (bytes). That bytes maybe are special characters like '\0', 1, ... So I cannot see all elements after special character when debugging. If I use std::vector, I can see all elements. I must use QByteArray but I cannot see all element of this variable when debugging. Help me, plz! Thanks!

Example: QByteArray bytes(4, '\0'); Now, if debug, I just see "". But I want to see "'\0', '\0', '\0', '\0'" or something like like this.

I also have the same problem with QDateTime. But I resolved by this help: http://www.qtcentre.org/threads/32336-View-QDate-and-QDateTime-in-VisualStudio-debugger

This link may help but this not resolve my problem: http://qt-project.org/wiki/IDE-debug-helpers

Example:

QByteArray ba("Hello"); //debuging, see: ba = "Hello"     
ba.append('\0');     
ba.append("a message"); //we just see: ba = "Hello"   

Answer 1

I contribute here a piece of code I had to write since I could not find any method doing something close to that: display a QByteArray as a meaningful QString in a way python would do it: ascii is kept as this, special char are displayed as hexadecimal code.

If someone knows a better way ! (here it's QT 4.6)

QString toDebug(const QByteArray & line) {

    QString s;
    uchar c;

    for ( int i=0 ; i < line.size() ; i++ ){
        c = line[i];
        if ( c >= 0x20 and c <= 126 ) {
            s.append(c);
        } else {
            s.append(QString("<%1>").arg(c, 2, 16, QChar('0')));
        }
    }
    return s;
}

Such as:

QByteArray a;
a.append("et");
a.append('\0');
a.append("voilà");
qDebug() << toDebug(QByteArray(a));

returns:

"et<00>voil<e0>"