Running Alive renders other values than regular debugger!

[savehansson]

I've got a method A with a string argument.
A calls method B, passing the string as an argument.
In B the string is basically encoded with code like this: HttpUtility.UrlEncode(theString).Replace("+", "%20").ToLowerInvariant(); and returned.

When debugging A with the regular debugger and "Testbild för unit test (med mellanslag, specialtecken och svänska tecken).jpg" as the argument, the value returned by B is:
"testbild%20f%c3%b6r%20unit%20test%20(med%20mellanslag%2c%20specialtecken%20och%20sv%c3%a4nska%20tecken).jpg" (the parenthesis are not encoded).

When debugging A with Alive, manually passing the same argument, the value returned by B is:
"testbild%20f%c3%b6r%20unit%20test%20%28med%20mellanslag%2c%20specialtecken%20och%20sv%c3%a4nska%20tecken%29.jpg" (the parenthesis are encoded).

[AmadeusW]

Wow, that's really interesting. My parentheses are not encoded in Alive:

I'm using System.Web.dll v4.0.30319, yourself? Would you send us a sample solution for the repro?

[savehansson]

First I tried to create a new sample solution but wasn't able to reproduce the error. So I made a copy of my original solution and stripped it down to just the crucial parts. I can now reproduce it. I will give this some more love next week and then send you the solution.

[AmadeusW]

Sounds good, we're looking forward to seeing it.

[savehansson]

In the solution there are two projects involved in this issue:

• AProject is a Web Application.
• BProject is a class library.

Both references the same System.Web:

In AProject there is an AMethod calling the BMethod in BProject.

When launching Alive directly on BMethod entering the argument "( )" the result is:

When launching Alive directly on AMethod entering the same argument the result is:

This time the parentheses are encoded differently.

If I continue the same session in BMethod the result is as expected, but notice that the space also is encoded by HttpUtility.UrlEncode() (as %20 instead of +):

It sure looks like there are two different versions/incarnations of HttpUtility.UrlEncode() involved here (or some other method that it depends on).

As you probably know there is a bunch of encoding methods in .NET, with some differences in how they handle safe characters. Apparently there also have been some changes in (some of) them over the years. I don't know if it is relevant, but you can find some info and links over at SO.

@AmadeusW I will e-mail you my sample solution.

Good luck!

[savehansson]

And, if it helps, here's a list of all System.Web.dllcurrently on my machine:

[savehansson]

I'm still waiting for some feedback. Almost any kind of feedback would be nice at this point.

[JoshVarty]

Sorry for the silence on this.

We can reproduce this bug and we're planing to take steps to fix it. However as you may have seen we've had to remove Alive from the Visual Studio Gallery so will not be updating the last public release of Alive any further.

We're currently investigating a few different ways Alive might integrate with future versions of Visual Studio. Once we've figured out what that looks like we'll definitely do our best to fix this and get it into that version of Alive/VS.