Capturing cout in Visual Studio 2005 output window?

Question

I created a C++ console app and just want to capture the cout/cerr statements in the Output Window within the Visual Studio 2005 IDE. I\'m sure this is just a setting that I

Answer 1

You can capture the output of cout like this, for example:

std::streambuf* old_rdbuf = std::cout.rdbuf();
std::stringbuf new_rdbuf;
// replace default output buffer with string buffer
std::cout.rdbuf(&new_rdbuf);

// write to new buffer, make sure to flush at the end
std::cout << "hello, world" << std::endl;

std::string s(new_rdbuf.str());
// restore the default buffer before destroying the new one
std::cout.rdbuf(old_rdbuf);

// show that the data actually went somewhere
std::cout << s.size() << ": " << s;

Magicking it into the Visual Studio 2005 output window is left as an exercise to a Visual Studio 2005 plugin developer. But you could probably redirect it elsewhere, like a file or a custom window, perhaps by writing a custom streambuf class (see also boost.iostream).