Back to Questions
944
views4
comments
Variable inspection in Visual Studio
f#

Hi group,
I am using VS 2008 Shell with F# CTP.

I entered the following code:

#light
let a = 1
let b = a+1

When I press F10 twice and hover over variable 'b', I expected to see the value '2'.
Instead I see a little tooltip window which reads "val b : int".

I also tried the Immediate Window of VS - there I get the message:
The name 'b' does not exist in the current context

Is it possible to inspect values?

Thanks,
Jiri

.

Just came across Brian's page DebuggerVisualizers in F#

'Locals' and 'Immediate' windows then start showing something.

By on 1/28/2009 9:38 AM ()

The hover tooltips were not implemented in the CTP (will appear in next release).

As for locals/immediate window, it works, but unfortunately top-level lets are module-bound and the code runs as a static initializer. If you put the code in a function, a la

let Main() =

let a = 1

let b = a+1

()

Main()

then the debug experience improves considerably. The approximate moral here for the CTP release is 'top-level code is not as debuggable as the rest'.

By on 1/28/2009 9:37 AM ()

Hi Brian - your example with Main() did not work for me - no joy with a nor b.
Does it matter if your code lives in an .fs or .fsx file?

Thanks, Jiri

By on 1/28/2009 1:57 PM ()

I think it must be in an .fs file in a project (.fsx don't compile into a project by default, yes?).

I just tried this on my home box (VS Shell and CTP F# 1.9.6.2), and I press F10 and the cursor is on the call to Main(), and I press F11 to step in and then F10 a couple more times to walk over the 'a' and 'b' lines, and the values appear in the locals window, and typing 'a' in the immediate window shows the value while I am inside the function body. Do you not see this behavior?

By on 1/28/2009 7:34 PM ()

    Topic tags

    IntelliFactory Offices Copyright (c) 2011-2012 IntelliFactory. All rights reserved.
    Home | Products | Consulting | Trainings | Blogs | Jobs | Contact Us | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy     		Built with WebSharper