How to display Visual Studio Console Application output inside the IDE and not in command prompt?

Question

I recently started C++ programming on Visual Studio and I noticed that it always gives me the console output in the command prompt (CMD).
I am a java programmer and I'm used to working with Eclipse and Netbeans. With those IDEs, I was able to see the console inside the IDE and not in a different separate window.
Is there a way to display the console output inside Visual Studio, like Eclipse and Netbeans do?

Answer 1

It's infuriating. I spent hours looking for this. Visual Studio doesn't have command prompt inside the IDE. They have it for Visual Studio code - Intergrated command prompt. But not for visual studio 2015 Enterprise. So, in other words, microsoft has command prompt terminal inside the free version of visual studio but not for the paid version

Answer 2

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be no.
In Visual Studio, console applications are displayed on the command prompt and not inside Visual Studio itself. Meaning that Console.WriteLine method and similar ones write your output to the console window because your application type is Console Application.
You are able to write output to Visual Studio itself by using System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine as mentioned on MSDN. That will cause the debug output to appear in the Output Window inside Visual Studio. In case you don't see that view, you can choose to show it by Debug => Windows => Output.

You should bare in mind that this is not what you asked for.
This "solution" is helpful just in case you want to debug parts of your code and don't want to open the command prompt but just see the relevant output inside the IDE.
In addition, you won't be able to give input back in this output view.
The most important thing, you will not be able to execute your application correctly outside of your coding environment. So, it will work only on the IDE but you won't be able to see this output when the application is on its own (as it meant to be as a console application).

Another solution, that you might like, is to work with Eclipse.
You said that you are familiar with Eclipse as a Java developer and now you work with C++ and don't get along with Visual Studio so far.
So, you can download Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers.
In there you will be familiar with the IDE and you will be able to display your output inside Eclipse without any weird and unnecessary workarounds.