Change default variable view for collections from "Scala collection" to toString?
Whenever I'm working with Scala in the debugger I find that collections are displayed in the Variables pane in a format that isn't immediately useful.
If I right click on a given collection instance and go to "View as" I see that "Scala collection" is the default ticked option.
So e.g. my lists display as just "::" and I have to always manually select toString from the "View as" menu to see the actual elements of the list.
I presume there must be some situation where seeing "::" is very useful but can't think what?
Is there anyway to switch the default from "Scala collection" to toString - and what's the downside that means that this is not the default behavior?
Info: using IDEA 2016.1.3 with Java 1.8 and Scala 2.11.
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First, "Scala collection" view let you see the size of the collection right away.
Second, and that is more important, it allows you to expand a collection and see individual elements instead of implementation details of the collection.

I think, "toString" view may be more convinient, but only if collections are quite small and their elements have good "toString" method. That's why "Scala collection" is the default.