I’ve just published Inline Watch 0.8.6, which includes this new feature:

• You can now control the maximum length of the displayed values

and a bunch of features related to custom formatting of object instances:

• Integer arithmetic in object formats, eg. {right-left} to display the width of a rectangle
• Pointer arithmetic, eg. {m_str+4} where your string actually starts at an offset
• Array indexing, eg. {m_arr[N]} where you want to display the N’th member of an array, where N can be a literal, {m_arr[4]} or another member, {m_arr[m_index]}
• Specifying the length of a string (when your string is long, or not null-terminated), again with a literal, {m_str,8}, or another member {m_str,{m_len}}
• Displaying braces now requires them to be backslash escaped – see the next example:
• Force hex or decimal display in object formats, so if you always want your Point instances to be displayed in decimal like this: {50, 100} even if the Visual Studio debugger is set to hex display, you can say \{{m_x,d}, {m_y,d}\}. Use an x to get hex display.

Here’s an example that demonstrates some of these features.  (It’s based on a customer example – they have a C++ string class whose string buffer includes a leading reference count, and is not NUL-terminated but instead has a length member.)

struct Formatting
{
  const char *s;     // 4-byte refcount then an unterminated string.
  int len;           // Number of chars in the string, counting from s+4.
  const char *a[3];  // An array of three C-style strings.
  int current;       // Which of the three strings is the 'current' one?

  Formatting()
  {
    s = "\x1\x2\x3\x4TextGARBAGEGARBAGE...";
    len = 4;
    a[0] = "Zero";
    a[1] = "One";
    a[2] = "Two";
    current = 1; // "One" is the string to display.
  }
};

With an object formatting rule like this:

\{{s + 4,{len}}, {a[current]}\}

a Formatting instance displays like this: {“Text”, “One”}

You can download the new release from the download page or the gallery.

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