In Visual Studio when debugging C# code, can I export a List or a Dictionary in xml,csv or text format easily?

Question

In Visual Studio when debugging C# code, can I export a Dictionary<string,string> in xml,csv or text format easily?

I would like to export a Dictionary<string,string> in excel and see 2 columns of strings.

Debugging such dict in VS is cumbersome.

If there s any add on that simplifies visualization that s ok too.

Answer 1

You can add a watch to your Dictionary (or List), then under the Watch Window you can then expand the entire dictionary (or List), right click, select-all, copy

Then in Excel you can paste the data and it should auto-format:

You could also just paste this data directly into another text-editor (or just view the data directly in the watch window too).

Hope that can help.

Answer 2

You could use a simple snippet like this:

var output = dict.Select(kv => string.Format("{0},{1}", kv.Key, kv.Value)); File.WriteAllLines("output.csv", output); 

As noted in the comments, if your dictionary keys or values contain any commas or newlines, you'll need something slightly more complex to generate valid a CSV file.