Newlines in the Immediate Window

visual-studio debugging visual-studio-2010 newline immediate-window
Bob Kaufman picture Bob Kaufman · May 19, 2010 · Viewed 10k times · Source

Using Visual Studio 2010 Professional, I have a ToString() method that looks like this:

public override string ToString()
{
    return "something" + "\n" + "something";
}

Because there are several "something"'s and each is long, I'd like to see

something
something

Sadly, I'm seeing

"something\nsomething"

Is there a way to get what I want?

Answer

davesem picture davesem · May 21, 2010

Actually there is a way. You can use format specifiers in the immediate window to change the format of the display. If you have a string with carriage returns and linefeeds in it ("\r\n") you can follow the print request with the 'no quotes' format specifier.

In the immediate window type:

?MyObj.ToString(),nq

and the \r\n will cause newlines in the immediate window.

For more info on format specifiers see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e514eeby.aspx

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