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I have a set of C# classes, extending an abstract class. There is an abstract method void Show() on the parent. The extending classes are part of a graph with cycles. The implementations of Show invoke many times Console.Write(). Between the console writes there are recursive and other calls.

My problem - it is very hard to debug without an easy way to see the state of the graph. I've tried to make that method string Show(), but it is very hard to do properly with all the recursion and cycles. Can you suggest a better approach?

Thanks, Sam

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Consider using DebuggerDisplay rather than ToString. See these excellent articles:

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override your ToString() method, the tooltip window shown by the debugger uses this method to show any relevant data related to your object.

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Those Show methods are 30-50 lines, with some funky indentation going on. I don't want to rewrite them.
you dont need to rewrite them, just make them return the shown text on the console and then return it by the ToString() method
"I've tried to make that method string Show(), but it is very hard to do properly with all the recursion and cycles."
this trick may help, make a private string buffer, when the show method is called, clear it, when a new line is shown on the console append it to the buffer, in the ToString() method, return that buffer.

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