How to disable cout output in the runtime?

Question

I often use cout for debugging purpose in many different places in my code, and then I get frustrated and comment all of them manually.

Is there a way to suppress cout output in the runtime?

And more importantly, let's say I want to suppress all cout outputs, but I still want to see 1 specific output (let's say the final output of the program) in the terminal.

Is it possible to use an ""other way"" of printing to the terminal for showing the program output, and then when suppressing cout still see things that are printed using this ""other way""?

Answer 1

Sure, you can (example here):

int main() {     std::cout << "First message" << std::endl;      std::cout.setstate(std::ios_base::failbit);     std::cout << "Second message" << std::endl;      std::cout.clear();     std::cout << "Last message" << std::endl;      return 0; } 

Outputs:

First message Last message 

This is because putting the stream in fail state will make it silently discard any output, until the failbit is cleared.

Answer 2

To supress output, you can disconnect the underlying buffer from cout.

#include <iostream>  using namespace std;  int main(){      // get underlying buffer     streambuf* orig_buf = cout.rdbuf();      // set null     cout.rdbuf(NULL);      cout << "this will not be displayed." << endl;      // restore buffer     cout.rdbuf(orig_buf);      cout << "this will be dispalyed." << endl;      return 0; }