unable to evaluate expression whilst debugging

Question

When debugging asp.net code (running against IIS, and using Visual studio 2013) and in a breakpoint and trying to evaluate a variable using quick watch i quite often get \"u

Answer 1

The C# debugging engine relies heavily on the CLR debugger in order to evaluate expressions. That message indicates that the CLR is in a state in which it is unable to perform simple evaluations and the reasons for that can include the following

• a local variable is optimized away
• the thread is stopped in a GC unsafe point
• a previous function call caused the debugger to get into a bad state and hence further evaluations simply aren't possible