Visual Studio Hacks

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Chapter 6, Speed Hacks

#46 Master the Command Window

HACK

and set the values of variables. You can simply type a question mark, a space,

and then the name of a variable, and when you press Enter, the value of that

variable will be printed to the screen. Here is an example of this command:

>? i

0

In this example, the value of the variable i is zero. You can also set the value

of a variable through the command window by using the question mark, a

space, the name of the variable, and then an equals sign and the value that

you want to set the variable to. Here is an example of setting the value of a

variable through the command window:

>? i =2

2

As an alternative to using the question mark, you can also set the command

window to immediate mode; this turns the command window into an imme-

diate window and you no longer need to use a question mark. You can set

the command window to immediate mode by typing in the command

immed.

Following is a transcript of using the command window in immediate mode:

>immed

i

0

To switch the command window back into command mode, you simply need

to type in any command prefixed with

>. For instance, you could type >cmd

and the window would switch back to command mode.

Another benefit to viewing the value of a variable in the command window

is that it is easy to copy the value of that variable out of the command win-

dow. If you are working with a large string of XML, it might ...