How can i display a C-style array in visual studio watch without showing its address

Question

I'm looking for a easy way to display a C-style-array in the visual studio watch window without showing its address.

Unfortunately, the format specifier na does only cover pointers.

Fe see this array definition

int a[] = { 1,2 };

Answer 1

Maybe it's obvious but an easy workaround the somewhat narrow definition of na is to cast to a pointer. For the example in the question:

The only drawback is that the array length has to be specified manually and that it's way too expressive.

However, what's nice is that this also works with natvis :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> 
<AutoVisualizer xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/vstudio/debugger/natvis/2010"> 
  <Type Name="S">
    <DisplayString>a={(int*)a,2na}</DisplayString> 
  </Type>
</AutoVisualizer>