Microsoft 9GD00001 manual Call Stack Window, Quick Watch Window, 163

Chapter 6: Debugging with Visual Studio 163

The Call Stack Window

If you recall from the previous section on design-time tools, the Call Hierarchy window gives you a view of the code at design time. On a related note, you also have the ability to view the path of execution during runtime via the Call Stack window. During debugging, you may find the Call Stack window already open on the right-bottom of VS in a tab next to the Immediate window if you’ve not changed your layout and depending upon your initial VS environment setup. Otherwise, you can open this window by selecting Debug Windows Call Stack from the top menu bar. With the Call Stack window, you can view the current execution path of the application from Main to where your current line of execution is. Figure 6-12 shows the Call Stack window. To understand why it’s called a Call Stack, notice that each method call is stacked on the other with the current method at the top, the entry point at the bottom, and subsequent calls in between; it’s like a stack of plates where the last plate is at the top.

In the Call Stack window, shown in Figure 6-12, you can see that I’ve stepped into

the GetOrderDiscount method. Double-clicking another method in the Call Stack window brings you to the call site where a given method was called. This is a very important and powerful tool because it allows you to visit calling code and inspect application state at the call site, giving you valuable information about how calculations were formulated before the current method was called.

The Quick Watch Window

The Quick Watch window allows you to quickly view an expression. It offers Intellisense when writing the expression, allowing you to reevaluate the expression and add the expression to a Watch window. You can open the Quick Watch window by selecting Debug Quick Watch or pressing CTRL-D, Q. If you’ve selected an expression in the editor,

Figure 6-12 The Call Stack window