Ctrl+LeftArrow and Ctrl+RightArrow broken in VS 2005 Watch window

In the Visual Studio 2005 Watch window (where values of variables or expressions can be monitored during a debugging session), while editing a value in the Name field (where the variable/expression to be monitored is defined), support for the Ctrl+LeftArrow and Ctrl+RightArrow keyboard shortcuts isn't implemented properly.

In text-editing applications, the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+RightArrow and Ctrl+LeftArrow commonly have the functionality of moving the caret (insertion point) to the beginning of the current word or the end of the next word. In the VS 2005 main code window, there is very good support for these keyboard shortcuts: in an identifier with several parts separated by period characters (such as System.Drawing.Rectangle.Empty), the insertion point is moved to before and after each period character on successive uses of the shortcut, making it easy to quickly navigate to either the beginning or the end of each component of the identifier. The insertion point also stops at other common code "punctuation", such as the [ and ] characters.

However, while editing a value in the Watch window, the Ctrl+LeftArrow and Ctrl+RightArrow shortcut behaviors follow a different set of rules. When these shortcuts are used in the Watch window, the insertion point bypasses most common code punctuation characters, and instead stops only at space characters. (A bit of additional testing I did shows that certain punctuation characters such as ? and ! are also treated as stopping points in the Watch window.)

Interestingly, this behavior appears to be a regression from Visual Studio 2003; in VS 2003, a quick test shows that when doing a Ctrl+LeftArrow / Ctrl+RightArrow in the Watch window, the caret does indeed treat a "." character as a stopping point. Possibly this is a result of a rewrite of the Watch window to implement one of the very nice new features introduced in VS 2005: Intellisense being enabled and usable when editing a value in the Watch window.