Software Update: Microsoft Visual Studio 2019 16.11.8

Microsoft recently released Visual Studio 2022, but will of course continue to support version 2019. This popular programming development environment has useful options to make programming easier in Visual C++, Visual Basic, C#, F# and Python, among others. The complete list of the changes in the 2019 edition can be found in the accompanying release notes† In version 16.11.8, Microsoft has made the following changes and improvements:

Bidirectional text control character rendering

To prevent a potentially malicious exploit that allows code to be misrepresented, the Visual Studio editor will no longer allow bidirectional text control characters to manipulate the order of characters on the editing surface. A new option will cause these bidirectional text control characters to be shown with placeholders. The bidirectional text control characters will still be present in the code as this behavior only impacts what is rendered in the code editor.

This functionality is controlled in Tools\Options. Under the Text Editor\General page there is an option for “Show bidirectional text control characters”, which will be checked by default. When checked, all bidirectional text control characters will be rendered as placeholders. Unchecking the option will revert to the previous behavior where these characters are not rendered.

A Unicode character is considered a bidirectional text control character if it falls into any of the following ranges: U+061c, U+200e-U+200f, U+202a-U+202e, U+2066-U+2069.

Other Issues Addressed in this Release

• Corrected an issue in C++ compiler where a templated destructor involved in a class hierarchy with data member initializers may be instantiated too early, potentially leading to incorrect diagnostics about uses of undefined types or other errors.
• Fixed an issue in ATL’s CString comparisions under C++20 and C++Latest language modes.
• Added Python 3.9.7 to Python workload. Removed Python 3.7.8 due to a security vulnerability.