Comparing States

Question

I'm not very familiar with the utilities that are offered by VS, but is there something that will let me compare the entire state of a program at two different points while im debugging?

What I want to do is basically this. I have a program that has two different ways to get to the same place, and I would like to compare all variables, classes, etc.

Thank you in advance!

Sam Hobbs · Answer

It would be a feature of the debugger. I know that the debugger can take a snapshot of memory and then at a later point during execution it can show what has changed. That would probably be too detailed to be useful for managed programs unless it shows memory as managed program memory. It also would probably not show some status information internal to .Net. I could look at the documentationof the debugger but I suggest you do that; at least try. It will help you to learn what the debugger offers. Classes can be serializable. You could make your classes serializable or at least give them the ability to dump themselves. Then you could do a compare somehow. Since serailizing is a very common requirement there are already facilities for doing that and that could be used for this purpose.

Nitesh Luharuka · Answer

IF I understand you correct I believe VS2011 has a feature similar to that to compare stuff. Not sure if it runs in running mode.

Shaun mcbrayer · Answer

well i was looking more for VS to analyze everything in the program at the two points i would like to compare.

Nitesh Luharuka · Answer

Yes you can use debugging feature of VS to accomplish same. Put a breakpoint at the line where you want to compare.You can do this by pressing F9 on the line. Then use the Watch window to view the values of all your variables. If you do not see watch window while debugging go to View menu and select Watch Window you will see it at bottom. Thanks.