Copy Debug Variable 🚀

A powerful VS Code extension that allows you to copy and compare debugger variables quickly, accurately, and without element limits.

Why use this extension?

By default, when copying large arrays or objects in the VS Code Debugger, you often face:

• Truncation: Only the first 25-50 elements are copied.
• Slow Performance: Significant lag when traversing deeply nested objects.
• Formatting Issues: Loss of Unicode characters or decimal precision.

Copy Debug Variable solves these problems using a Turbo Strategy (JSON Serialization).

Key Features

• ⚡ Turbo Speed: Uses native language serialization to package data, allowing you to fetch 10,000+ elements in the blink of an eye.
• 🌐 Multi-Language Support: Works perfectly on both .NET (C#) and JavaScript/TypeScript (Node.js, React, Chrome, etc.).
• 💎 Original Data Integrity: Preserves decimal formatting (e.g., 2.0), supports Unicode (Vietnamese, Chinese, etc.), and handles special types.
• 🛠 Smart Handling: Automatically manages circular references to prevent debugger crashes.
• 📋 Flexible Formats: Supports copying as JSON or Plain Text.
• 🔍 Smart Comparison (Diff View): Compare two variables or two different states of the same variable using VS Code's native diff editor.

Format Details:

• JSON Format (Default):

  • Reconstructs objects into valid JSON strings.
  • Pretty-printed with indentation for readability.
  • Best for: Saving to .json files, creating mock data for APIs, or data analysis tools.
  • Preserves data types (numbers, booleans, arrays, nested objects).

• Plain Text Format:

  • Removes JSON syntax (brackets, commas) to keep only the core content.
  • Uses indentation to represent the object hierarchy.
  • Best for: Documentation, sharing in chat (Slack/Teams/Discord) for quick review, or when you want to avoid JSON syntax noise.

How to Use

Basic Copying

1. While debugging, right-click on any variable in the Variables view.
2. Select Copy Variable Value.
3. The data is now ready in your clipboard!

Smart Comparison

1. Right-click on Variable A and select Select for Compare.
2. Right-click on Variable B and select Compare with Selected.
3. VS Code will open a side-by-side diff view showing the structural differences.

Requirements

• For .NET (C#): Your project needs Newtonsoft.Json (most common) or System.Text.Json (default in .NET Core 3+).
• For JavaScript/TypeScript: No extra requirements, works out of the box.

Configuration

You can customize the default format in Settings:

• copyDebugVariable.format: json (default) or plain.

Developed by Hao Do. Happy Debugging! 💻✨