Create window console inside main win32 window

Question

I have a win32 application that need to open a console like the games when tilde is pressed. I tought that the best solution is to use the CreateWindow function. Is this right?

Answer 1

The solutions here won't work because newer versions of the Windows SDK define the FILE structure by:

#ifndef _FILE_DEFINED
    #define _FILE_DEFINED
    typedef struct _iobuf
    {
        void* _Placeholder;
    } FILE;
#endif

When trying to overwrite the stdin/out FILE structures with the = operator, only one pointer will be copied. To copy the whole FILE struct, you have to define the FILE structure before your windows.h include:

#ifndef _FILE_DEFINED
struct _iobuf {
        char *_ptr;
        int   _cnt;
        char *_base;
        int   _flag;
        int   _file;
        int   _charbuf;
        int   _bufsiz;
        char *_tmpfname;
        };
typedef struct _iobuf FILE;
#define _FILE_DEFINED
#endif

#include 

If this is somehow not possible for you, you can still define your own FILE structure as FILE_COMPLETE and use this codesnippet:

#include 
#include 
#include 

AllocConsole();
SetConsoleTitleA("ConsoleTitle");
typedef struct { char* _ptr; int _cnt; char* _base; int _flag; int _file; int _charbuf; int _bufsiz; char* _tmpfname; } FILE_COMPLETE;
*(FILE_COMPLETE*)stdout = *(FILE_COMPLETE*)_fdopen(_open_osfhandle((long)GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), _O_TEXT), "w");
*(FILE_COMPLETE*)stderr = *(FILE_COMPLETE*)_fdopen(_open_osfhandle((long)GetStdHandle(STD_ERROR_HANDLE), _O_TEXT), "w");
*(FILE_COMPLETE*)stdin = *(FILE_COMPLETE*)_fdopen(_open_osfhandle((long)GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE), _O_TEXT), "r");
setvbuf(stdout, NULL, _IONBF, 0);
setvbuf(stderr, NULL, _IONBF, 0);
setvbuf(stdin, NULL, _IONBF, 0);