Regex Match Debugger Visualizer

Debugger visualizers, such as the popular IEnumerable visualizer, add tremendous power to the debugging experience in Visual Studio by enabling custom views of complex data types. We’ve leveraged our Remote UI features to enable you to create debugger visualizers with VisualStudio.Extensibility!

How to launch the debugger visualizer

To use the regex match debugger visualizer, find a RegularExpressions.Match or RegularExpressions.MatchCollection object in the Locals or Watch Window when debugging, and click the View button. The modal visualizer dialog will appear.

Selecting among multiple visualizers

If you're debugging a type for which you have more than one applicable visualizer, click the arrow button, and select the appropriate visualizer from the dropdown menu.

Using the debugger visualizer

If you're debugging a RegularExpressions.Match object and there's a single match in your string, you'll see something like this:

First, you'll see an entry for the whole match and then you'll see the elements that matched for each capture group. Highlighted at the end of the group are the start and stop positions within the character array for that match or group.

Multiple matching substrings

If your Match object has multiple matching substrings, you'll see something like this:

Match collection

If you're visualizing a RegularExpressions.MatchCollection object, you'll see something like this: