Is it possible to watch the value of a memory location using the Visual Studio Debugger's Watch window?

merlin2011 picture merlin2011 · Apr 5, 2012 · Viewed 26.5k times · Source

Yes, I know there are four Memory windows, but I much prefer the display of a single value in the watch window, and I'm wondering if it's possible to specify a memory location to watch in the watch window.

Putting the address by itself just evaluates to the address in hex.

Answer

JaredPar picture JaredPar · Apr 5, 2012

If you want to watch a particular memory location then you need to tell the debugger the type of the object that lives in that location. Instead of just 0x00aabbcc use (SomeType*)0x00aabbcc. Once the debugger knows the type of the memory location it will treat it just like a typed local and display values accordingly