Evaluate a watch expression

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Applies to: yesVisual Studio noVisual Studio for Mac

Note

This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here

Important

In Visual Studio 2015, this way of implementing expression evaluators is deprecated. For information about implementing CLR expression evaluators, see CLR expression evaluators and Managed expression evaluator sample.

When Visual Studio is ready to display the value of a watch expression, it calls EvaluateSync, which in turn calls EvaluateSync. This process produces an IDebugProperty2 object that contains the value and type of the expression.

In this implementation of IDebugParsedExpression::EvaluateSync, the expression is parsed and evaluated at the same time. This implementation performs the following tasks:

  1. Parses and evaluates the expression to produce a generic object that holds the value and its type. In C#, this is represented as an object while in C++, this is represented as a VARIANT.

  2. Instantiates a class (called CValueProperty in this example) that implements the IDebugProperty2 interface and stores in the class the value to be returned.

  3. Returns the IDebugProperty2 interface from the CValueProperty object.

Managed code

This is an implementation of the IDebugParsedExpression::EvaluateSync in managed code. The helper method Tokenize parses the expression into a parse tree. The helper function EvalToken converts the token to a value. The helper function FindTerm recursively traverses the parse tree, calling EvalToken for each node representing a value and applying any operations (addition or subtraction) in the expression.

namespace EEMC
{
    public class CParsedExpression : IDebugParsedExpression
    {
        public HRESULT EvaluateSync(
            uint evalFlags,
            uint timeout,
            IDebugSymbolProvider provider,
            IDebugAddress address,
            IDebugBinder binder,
            string resultType,
            out IDebugProperty2 result)
        {
            HRESULT retval = COM.S_OK;
            this.evalFlags = evalFlags;
            this.timeout = timeout;
            this.provider = provider;
            this.address = address;
            this.binder = binder;
            this.resultType = resultType;

            try
            {
                IDebugField field = null;
                // Tokenize, then parse.
                tokens = Tokenize(expression);
                result = new CValueProperty(
                        expression,
                        (int) FindTerm(EvalToken(tokens[0], out field),1),
                        field,
                        binder);
            }
            catch (ParseException)
            {
                result = new CValueProperty(expression, "Huh?");
                retval = COM.E_INVALIDARG;
            }
            return retval;
        }
    }
}

Unmanaged code

This is an implementation of the IDebugParsedExpression::EvaluateSync in unmanaged code. The helper function Evaluate parses and evaluates the expression, returning a VARIANT holding the resulting value. The helper function VariantValueToProperty bundles the VARIANT into a CValueProperty object.

STDMETHODIMP CParsedExpression::EvaluateSync(
    in  DWORD                 evalFlags,
    in  DWORD                 dwTimeout,
    in  IDebugSymbolProvider* pprovider,
    in  IDebugAddress*        paddress,
    in  IDebugBinder*         pbinder,
    in  BSTR                  bstrResultType,
    out IDebugProperty2**     ppproperty )
{
    // dwTimeout parameter is ignored in this implementation.
    if (pprovider == NULL)
        return E_INVALIDARG;

    if (paddress == NULL)
        return E_INVALIDARG;

    if (pbinder == NULL)
        return E_INVALIDARG;

    if (ppproperty == NULL)
        return E_INVALIDARG;
    else
        *ppproperty = 0;

    HRESULT hr;
    VARIANT value;
    BSTR    bstrErrorMessage = NULL;
    hr = ::Evaluate( pprovider,
                     paddress,
                     pbinder,
                     m_expr,
                     &bstrErrorMessage,
                     &value );
    if (hr != S_OK)
    {
        if (bstrErrorMessage == NULL)
            return hr;

        //we can display better messages ourselves.
        HRESULT hrLocal = S_OK;
        VARIANT varType;
        VARIANT varErrorMessage;

        VariantInit( &varType );
        VariantInit( &varErrorMessage );
        varErrorMessage.vt      = VT_BSTR;
        varErrorMessage.bstrVal = bstrErrorMessage;

        CValueProperty* valueProperty = new CValueProperty();
        if (valueProperty != NULL)
        {
            hrLocal = valueProperty->Init(m_expr, varType, varErrorMessage);
            if (SUCCEEDED(hrLocal))
            {
                hrLocal = valueProperty->QueryInterface( IID_IDebugProperty2,
                        reinterpret_cast<void**>(ppproperty) );
            }
        }

        VariantClear(&varType);
        VariantClear(&varErrorMessage); //frees BSTR
        if (!valueProperty)
            return hr;
        valueProperty->Release();
        if (FAILED(hrLocal))
            return hr;
    }
    else
    {
        if (bstrErrorMessage != NULL)
            SysFreeString(bstrErrorMessage);

        hr = VariantValueToProperty( pprovider,
                                     paddress,
                                     pbinder,
                                     m_radix,
                                     m_expr,
                                     value,
                                     ppproperty );
        VariantClear(&value);
        if (FAILED(hr))
            return hr;
    }

    return S_OK;
}

See also