Saving values of debug session from watch window to a file - visual-studio

Question

I have to trace some events I want to trace to monitor the operation of a multi-threaded application. For this purpose I defined an array of structs. Each element is one trace record.
enum Event { start, stop, pause };
struct A
{
Event e;
int x, y, z;
};
main()
{
A a[100];
}
There is also a function the writes the event to the array. The array a can be displayed in the watch window of Visual Studio, although not all struct members are displayed:
- a 0x008ff4bc {{e=0xcccccccc x=0xcccccccc y=0xcccccccc ...}, {e=0xcccccccc x=0xcccccccc y=0xcccccccc ...}, ...} A[0x00000064]
+ [0x00000000] {e=0xcccccccc x=0xcccccccc y=0xcccccccc ...} A
+ [0x00000001] {e=0xcccccccc x=0xcccccccc y=0xcccccccc ...} A
+ [0x00000002] {e=0xcccccccc x=0xcccccccc y=0xcccccccc ...} A
Since the array is rather large and the limitation of the watch I want to export the entire array content to a file. This could be done by adding a file export function to the code that is being debugged. But this is no handy, since the debugger is just in a breakpoint and it's not always possible to tell the application to run the export function.
How can I export the array with the values of all members? Is there an option to use the VS command window or probably immediate window to create a text file with the data?

Answer 1

Does it have to be a one-click export? You can select all, copy and paste into your output file. You can do it from Watch window, but the output is a bit more clear from either Immediate or Command windows.
You can beautify the format by creating a custom visualizer in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\Common7\Packages\Debugger\Visualizers (use your version of the VS).
Here is how it may look, for example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<AutoVisualizer xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/vstudio/debugger/natvis/2010">
<Type Name="A">
<DisplayString>({e}:{x},{y},{z})</DisplayString>
</Type>
</AutoVisualizer>