Viewing Array Contents During Debugging in VS Code

After getting annoyed with adding a bunch of array indices to the watch list for a program that I was debugging, I went in search of a better solution. I came across an issue on the VS Code C/C++ Tools GitHub repo. Apparently, you can use the following pattern in the watch list instead

*(int(*)[10])some_pointer

to see the contents of the array some_pointer of type int. Or, basically

*(<type>(*)[arrSize])arrName

Even better, you can use the following

*arrName@arrSize

Here’s a screenshot of doing it manually

Manually adding array elements during debug

and here’s a screenshot of using the shortcut

Shortcut of viewing array elements during debug

Much better.