Auto-Expanding User-Defined (and STL) Types in the Debugger

In Visual C++ 5 (and probably 6, although I don't have it to test), there is an undocumented feature that controls this display (called auto-expansion). It is controlled by a file named AutoExp.DAT in the \DevStudio\SharedIDE\Bin directory. That file is pretty much self-documenting. An excerpt from the file reads:

"While debugging, Data Tips and items in the Watch and Variable windows are automatically expanded to show their most important elements. The expansion follows the format given by the rules in this file. You can add rules for your types or change the predefined rules."

To resolve my frustration with std::string, I simply added the following lines in the [AutoExpand] section of the file:

; from string
std::basic_string<char,std::char_traits<char>,std::allocator<char>> =<_Ptr,s>

Note that the spacing (or lack thereof) is important. Also note that I was not able to use just std::string or std::basic_string<. I needed to use the fully expanded type, including all template parameters.

If you use Unicode and std::wstring, you'll need an entry such as the following (untested):

std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t>> =<_Ptr,su>

You'll also need to change the DisplayUnicode setting to 1 in the [Unicode] section of the file so that Unicode strings are automatically expanded as text, rather than arrays of unsigned short.