title: How to use Data Type Renderers list for byte[] in IntelliJ
body: <p>So I have all these byte[]'s, and their encoding could be one of many different formats, depending on where I'm currently debugging.  I'd like to be able to toss together a list of projections for the byte array.  I'm using IntelliJ's Data Type Renderers view, applying the renderer to type byte[], and I'm primarily concerned with the List of Expressions box.</p>
  
  <p>So I've seen how you can render the node with the expression <code>new String(this)</code>, however that doesn't work in the list of expressions view below.  Eventually I want to do expressions like <code>new String(this, "UTF16")</code> (or do conversions to hex or base64 or w/e) but <code>this</code> doesn't appear to be a byte[] in the expressions list box - in fact, when I try to typecast like <code>(byte[])this</code> the result says <code>Inconvertible types; cannot cast '_Dummy_.__Array__≤T≥' to 'byte[]'</code> (same behavior for java.lang.Byte[]).  It's really strange behavior, that in one place it's a byte[] and in another it's some opaque internal type.</p>
  
  <p>What does work is simply displaying the fields - i.e., an expression like <code>this.length</code> works as expected.  Also, an expression like <code>this</code> simply rerenders the node, claiming its type is byte[] and its object id is the same as the original's id.</p>