Associative arrays not displayed in debugger

[Andrew]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012 09:16:47 +0100
Rainer Schuetze <r.sagitario at gmx.de> wrote:

> On 26.02.2012 04:56, Andrew wrote:
> > I'm not sure if here is the right place for this, but: I'm
> > debugging a D program using Mago running under Visual D. It doesn't
> > show the contents of watched associative arrays and I can't figure
> > out how to make it do so. Google has been unhelpful.
> >
> > I can switch to the VS debugger and it will show the internals, but
> > the view is...highly nonoptimal, to say the least.
> 
> With the visualizer macros in autoexp.dat, the VS debugger shows an 
> associative array something like this:

<snip>
You're right. On second inspection it seems that it's not the array
that's confusing the VS debugger, but its contents. They keys are
showing up as garbage. The values are class objects for which I can
only see the base type's members, if I expand down far enough to find
them. That may be working as designed. I'm mostly familiar with C and
python. C didn't have inheritance and I've never done anything complex
enough in Python to require a debugger, so I must admit I'm unfamiliar
with how debugger watches operate in the presence of inheritance. 

Given my relative inexperience with D I'm inclined to think the garbage
keys indicate a problem with my code rather than a problem with the
debugger. :-) 

Although I'd add that on my end it expands the array into indexed
entries; each entry into some implementation details, one of which is
"value"; and "value" expands into the actual object. That still strikes
me as nonoptimal. array->keys->members_of_key_value would be much
nicer. 

Mago suits me better in all other respects so I'll probably stick with
that anyway. 

--

Andrew