Question

Is it possible to see strings that use 16 bits chars in Xcode debugger? I use a custom string class, not NSString. The strings are NULL terminated. The only way I can see the strings is if I see them as memory, but they are hard to read.

Thank you!

Answer 1

You’ll need to write a data formatter bundle — just writing the data formatter expressions inside the debugger isn’t enough. Viewing strings in the Xcode debugger is a black art. Even once you’ve written the data formatter bundle, be prepared for them not to work at least 50% of the time. We’ve been fighting this issue for about 5 years now. Most of the time the debugger will tell you the variable is no longer in scope when it really is, and you’ll still need to drill down into the members to view the raw memory anyway.

Something that may make it easier (I haven’t tried this) is to write a method in the class that returns an NSString and then you may be able to get the data formatter expressions to display something useful.