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Is there a way to get the underlying variable name of a target object in a Visual Studio debugger visualizer? The built-in string visualizer does it:

string myStr = "abc\ndef";
Debugger.Break();

Clicking on the visualizer icon for myStr, you will see the "Expression" text box shows "myStr". How can I get this in my own visualizers?

yoyoyoyosef
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  • +1, I hope someone can help, but I fear that without access to the internal DebugeeHost class it's not going to happen. – ewbi May 20 '09 at 22:12
  • Does this answer your question? [Visualized expression in custom data visualizer](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54749716/visualized-expression-in-custom-data-visualizer) – Zev Spitz Apr 14 '21 at 09:39

1 Answers1

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It's not possible to do. The only information provided to the visualizer is the value.

The string visualizer has the name because it is in fact not a true visualizer. That is, it's a debugger feature which has a greater level of access to the underlying metadata and more importantly the expression evaluators.

JaredPar
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