One of the many things that you end up having to do while debugging a program is displaying data types. While you probably know many of the basic commands like db, da, du, and soforth, one perhaps little-used command is useful for displaying a four or eight byte quantity in a number of different data types: the “.formats” command. This command is useful for viewing various primative/built-in data types, where you cannot display as a structure via the “dt” command.
In particular, you can use .formats to translate a number of different data types into readable values, including floating point or various time formats (time_t if you provide a 32-bit value, or FILETIME if you give a 64-bit value). For instance:
0:001> .formats 41414141 Evaluate expression: Hex: 41414141 Decimal: 1094795585 Octal: 10120240501 Binary: 01000001 01000001 01000001 01000001 Chars: AAAA Time: Fri Sep 10 01:53:05 2004 Float: low 12.0784 high 0 Double: 5.40901e-315
The command also supports 64-bit filetime quantities:
0:001> .formats 01010101`01010101
Evaluate expression:
Hex: 01010101`01010101
Decimal: 72340172838076673
Octal: 0004010020040100200401
Binary: 00000001 00000001 00000001 00000001
00000001 00000001 00000001 00000001
Chars: ........
Time: Sun Mar 28 21:14:43.807 1830 (GMT-4)
Float: low 2.36943e-038 high 2.36943e-038
Double: 7.7486e-304
.formats is primarily useful for saving you a bit of time poking around in a calculator to translate times, or convert perhaps an overwritten eip into text if you are examining a stack buffer string overflow. In conjunction with db and dt, you should be able to format most any data you’ll come across in a debugging session into a readable format (provided you have symbols, of course, in the case of complex user-defined data types).
It’s worth noting that .formats interprets arguments using your default radix unless specified otherwise. So you can convert numbers to from decimal to hex by using the n specifier.
Example:
0:000> .formats 0n10
Evaluate expression:
Hex: 0000000a
Decimal: 10
Octal: 00000000012
Binary: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00001010
Chars: ….
Time: Wed Dec 31 16:00:10 1969
Float: low 1.4013e-044 high 0
Double: 4.94066e-323
Yep. Actually, between that and the other features of the built-in expression evaluator, the debugger can suffice as a passable poor man’s calculator in a pinch (been there, done that a few times myself).