How can I use Debug.Write with dynamic data?

Question

I am doing some scripting of Adobe InDesign. Their COM implementation is really designed for VB, so it\'s not rigorous about reporting data types, occasionally necessitating

Answer 1

No one has said it this way so I will.

Change

 var str = frame.Contents.ToString();

to

 string str = frame.Contents.ToString();

Answer 2

but I'm explicitly converting what I want to debug to a string

That's not actually true.

var str = frame.Contents.ToString();

This line is still completely dynamic.

You need to explicitly declare it as a string.

Alternatively, you could static-ize earlier by explicitly declaring frame as TextFrame.

Answer 3

You're being bitten by your use of var here, is my guess.

I'm assuming that Contents is dynamic.

Consider this example:

dynamic d = null;
var s = d.ToString();

s is dynamic not string.

You'll want to cast the object to object before calling ToString, or cast the result of ToString to a string. The point is that at some point, somewhere, you need a cast to get out of the dynamic cycle.

This is how I'd solve it:

string str = ((object)frame.Contents).ToString();
Debug.WriteLine(str);

or

string str = frame.Contents.ToString() as string;
Debug.WriteLine(str);