How do I print to the debug output window in a Win

Question

I've got a win32 project that I've loaded into Visual Studio 2005. I'd like to be able to print things to the Visual Studio output window, but I can't for the life of me work out how. I've tried 'printf' and 'cout <<' but my messages stay stubbornly unprinted.

Is there some sort of special way to print to the Visual Studio output window?

Answer 1

If you need to see the output of an existing program that extensively used printf w/o changing the code (or with minimal changes) you can redefine printf as follows and add it to the common header (stdafx.h).

int print_log(const char* format, ...)
{
    static char s_printf_buf[1024];
    va_list args;
    va_start(args, format);
    _vsnprintf(s_printf_buf, sizeof(s_printf_buf), format, args);
    va_end(args);
    OutputDebugStringA(s_printf_buf);
    return 0;
}

#define printf(format, ...) \
        print_log(format, __VA_ARGS__)

Answer 2

I was looking for a way to do this myself and figured out a simple solution.

I'm assuming that you started a default Win32 Project (Windows application) in Visual Studio, which provides a "WinMain" function. By default, Visual Studio sets the entry point to "SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS". You need to first change this by going to:

Project -> Properties -> Linker -> System -> Subsystem

And select "Console (/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE)" from the drop-down list.

Now, the program will not run, since a "main" function is needed instead of the "WinMain" function.

So now you can add a "main" function like you normally would in C++. After this, to start the GUI program, you can call the "WinMain" function from inside the "main" function.

The starting part of your program should now look something like this:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

// Main function for the console
int main(){

    // Calling the wWinMain function to start the GUI program
    // Parameters:
    // GetModuleHandle(NULL) - To get a handle to the current instance
    // NULL - Previous instance is not needed
    // NULL - Command line parameters are not needed
    // 1 - To show the window normally
    wWinMain(GetModuleHandle(NULL), NULL,NULL, 1); 

    system("pause");
    return 0;
}

// Function for entry into GUI program
int APIENTRY wWinMain(_In_ HINSTANCE hInstance,
                     _In_opt_ HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                     _In_ LPWSTR    lpCmdLine,
                     _In_ int       nCmdShow)
{
    // This will display "Hello World" in the console as soon as the GUI begins.
    cout << "Hello World" << endl;
.
.
.

Result of my implementation

Now you can use functions to output to the console in any part of your GUI program for debugging or other purposes.

Answer 3

Your Win32 project is likely a GUI project, not a console project. This causes a difference in the executable header. As a result, your GUI project will be responsible for opening its own window. That may be a console window, though. Call AllocConsole() to create it, and use the Win32 console functions to write to it.

Answer 4

If you want to print decimal variables:

wchar_t text_buffer[20] = { 0 }; //temporary buffer
swprintf(text_buffer, _countof(text_buffer), L"%d", your.variable); // convert
OutputDebugString(text_buffer); // print

Answer 5

You can also use WriteConsole method to print on console.

AllocConsole();
LPSTR lpBuff = "Hello Win32 API";
DWORD dwSize = 0;
WriteConsole(GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), lpBuff, lstrlen(lpBuff), &dwSize, NULL);

Answer 6

To print to the real console, you need to make it visible by using the linker flag /SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE. The extra console window is annoying, but for debugging purposes it's very valuable.

OutputDebugString prints to the debugger output when running inside the debugger.