How do I get the VS debugger to display the type n

Question

The Visual Studio autoexp.dat syntax allows you to display ‘the name of the most-derived type of the object’ with the 'special format' <,t>, which is very helpful if you have lots of derived types. From the syntax, I assumed that you could do the same thing for members, such as <member,t>, but when I try that the preview only shows ???

Are there ways to display the name of a member’s type in the preview?

I’d like to be able to do it in the [autoexpand] section, and also in the [visualizer] section (for different objects of course).

Answer 1

I have found a way to do it, but it's not a very elegant solution:

Write an [AutoExpand] entry for the member type which includes the <,t> directive. Then when you display the member with <member> it will show the same information as it does for the member type on its own, including its type name.

It's not a great solution, because I don't really want to have to dispay the type information every time when the member type appears on its own, but it does give me the information I was after.