Category Archives: VC++

VS2012 Migration #3: autoexp and NoStepInto Replacements

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Ofek Shilon

In the past I blogged quite a few times about two immensely useful albeit mostly-unofficial debugger features: watch modification via autoexp.dat, and step-into modification via NoStepInto registry key. A long while ago I raised two suggestions at MS UserVoice, to … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, VC++ | 3 Comments

VS2012 Migration #1: “The Project ‘’ has been renamed’ and Other Errors on Build

Posted on June 24, 2013 by Ofek Shilon

About half a year ago I started experimenting with VS2012. It was not a smooth migration by any means, and I finally got around to recording online some of the lessons I learnt along the way. One of the first … Continue reading →

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Forcing Construction of Global Objects in Static Libraries

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Ofek Shilon

Suppose you have a global object whose constructor does useful stuff – say, registration somewhere or initialization of global resources. Suppose further this object isn’t directly accessed anywhere – you just need the functionality in its ctor. All is fine, … Continue reading →

Posted in VC++ | 5 Comments

Quick Word to Fellow Hebrew Speaking Devs

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Ofek Shilon

It’s official – here’s some reference. (R2L in the editor is admittedly a bitch, though.)

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A Day with VS11 Beta – part 2.5: Auto Vectorizer, done right

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Ofek Shilon

Start at the end: the main example analyzed in the previous post is plain wrong. This loop: Vectorizes perfectly. Even after me wrongfully accusing his team with this fictitious vectorization miss, Jim Hogg was kind enough to (1) test it … Continue reading →

Posted in VC++ | 2 Comments

A Day with VS11 Beta – part 2: Auto Vectorizer

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Ofek Shilon

UPDATE: While I still believe the overall conclusions below hold, the actual analysis of the main example is erroneous and kept here only out of respect for some external links.  A detailed correction is in the following post.  Thanks @JimHogg! … Continue reading →

Posted in VC++ | 4 Comments

Viewing types, part 3: Exceptions

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Ofek Shilon

Last time a way was shown to use internal RTTI mechanics to view C++ type names without direct debugger aid. There is one place in particular where such type names carry substantial information, and that is c++ exceptions. These can … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, VC++ | 1 Comment

Viewing types, part 2: the manual way

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Ofek Shilon

Compiling with /d1reportAllClassLayout, even an empty file, dumps many compiler-intrinsic types. Six of these are interesting in the present context:  _PMD, _TypeDescriptor, _s__RTTIBaseClassDescriptor2, _s__RTTIBaseClassArray, _s__RTTIClassHierarchyDescriptor, and _s__RTTICompleteObjectLocator. Most of this machinery exists solely for multiple inheritance, and virtual inheritance in … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, VC++ | 3 Comments

Viewing types, part 1: The Normal way

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Ofek Shilon

Suppose C derives from B, which derives from A: Now create A-pointers which point to children types, B and C, and watch them in VS: The types in square brackets are the most derived types of the referenced objects. How … Continue reading →

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Blank Variable Watch, or OMF Errors

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Ofek Shilon

During a debugging session I faced a weird situation where the code compiled and ran just fine, yet some class members appeared blank at the watch window, and others showed – CXX0033: error in OMF type information Skip to the … Continue reading →

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