Can't view Dictionary contents in Visual Studio debugger

Question

I have a System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary object in my code and am trying to view its contents while stopped at a breakpoint in the Visual Studio debugger. The Dictionary class in .NET of course contains a list of keys and values.

If I right-click on the loaded object, and try to drill down into its contents, I seem to get into an infinite loop. For instance, if I'm trying to see the contained keys, I expand the Keys element, which shows me a count, and another collection called "Non-Public members". I expand the latter, and get another dictionary object, which has a Keys element, which I can expand to get another instance of "count" and "Non-Public members", which I can expand, etc., etc.:

Using QuickWatch gives me the same result, so how do I actually view the keys contained in the object?

Answer 1

I know this issue is fixed in later versions of Visual Studio. However, for some of us who are stuck in an older version of VS here is a quick fix to see the keys of a dictionary.

Let's say we have a dictionary named 'dict'. We need the keys to see the values. So in a watch window do this:

dict.Keys.ToList()

That will allow you to drill down into the list and see the keys.

If you know the index of the key you want to you do the following:

dict.Keys.ToList()[1]

This will display the key at index 1.

Now you can take that key and see what the value is with:

dict[dict.Keys.ToList()[1]]

Of course you can replace the index into the keys list with the actual key value in another watch line if that is easier.

EDIT: In addition, it is also possible to see the entries of a dictionary with the following in the watch window:

'dict.entries'

This will give you a list of entries to look through. Each entry will have a 'key' and 'value' property.