Question

Arrays and std::vectors (and, supposedly, all standard containers) are browseable in the Visual Studio debugger (you can hover the mouse pointer over them and inspect their contents).

Is there a way to prepare a custom container class, to allow browsing through its internal data the same way as std::vector does?

Answer 1

Try to look at file %VSINSTALLDIR%\Common7\Packages\Debugger\autoexp.dat.
There is customizable description of expansion rules for different data types.

From this file:

While debugging, Data Tips and items in the Watch and Variable windows
are automatically expanded to show their most important elements. The
expansion follows the format given by the rules in this file. You can
add rules for your types or change the predefined rules.

Similar question