How to view printf output in a Win32 application on Visual Studio 2010?

Question

How can you view printf output in a Win32 application (entering with a WinMain) in Visual Studio 2010?

Answer 1

Thanks torak for your answer. It helped me a lot.

I needed a bigger scroll back buffer so made a few additions after taking a look at the API functions. Shared here in case it helps anybody else:

void SetStdOutToNewConsole()
{
    // allocate a console for this app
    AllocConsole();

    // redirect unbuffered STDOUT to the console
    HANDLE consoleHandle = GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE);
    int fileDescriptor = _open_osfhandle((intptr_t)consoleHandle, _O_TEXT);
    FILE *fp = _fdopen( fileDescriptor, "w" );
    *stdout = *fp;
    setvbuf( stdout, NULL, _IONBF, 0 );

    // give the console window a nicer title
    SetConsoleTitle(L"Debug Output");

    // give the console window a bigger buffer size
    CONSOLE_SCREEN_BUFFER_INFO csbi;
    if ( GetConsoleScreenBufferInfo(consoleHandle, &csbi) )
    {
        COORD bufferSize;
        bufferSize.X = csbi.dwSize.X;
        bufferSize.Y = 9999;
        SetConsoleScreenBufferSize(consoleHandle, bufferSize);
    }
}

This increases the scroll back (screen buffer) height to 9999 lines.

Tested on Windows XP and Windows 7.