Seeing the console's output in Visual Studio 2010?

Question

You can use the System.Diagnostics.Debug.Write or System.Runtime.InteropServices method to write messages to the Output Window.

Here are a couple of things to check:

1. For console.Write/WriteLine, your app must be a console application. (right-click the project in Solution Explorer, choose Properties, and look at the "Output Type" combo in the Application Tab -- should be "Console Application" (note, if you really need a windows application or a class library, don't change this to Console App just to get the Console.WriteLine).

2. You could use System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine to write to the output window (to show the output window in VS, got to View | Output) Note that these writes will only occur in a build where the DEBUG conditional is defined (by default, debug builds define this, and release builds do not)

3. You could use System.Diagnostics.Trace.Writeline if you want to be able to write to configurable "listeners" in non-debug builds. (by default, this writes to the Output Window in Visual Studio, just like Debug.Writeline)

Add a Console.Read(); at the end of your program. It'll keep the application from closing, and you can see its output that way.

This is a console application I just dug up that stops after processing but before exiting:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        DummyObjectList dol = new DummyObjectList(2);
        dol.Add(new DummyObject("test1", (Decimal)25.36));
        dol.Add(new DummyObject("test2", (Decimal)0.698));
        XmlSerializer dolxs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(DummyObjectList));
        dolxs.Serialize(Console.Out, dol);

        Console.WriteLine(string.Empty);
        Console.WriteLine(string.Empty);

        List<DummyObject> dolist = new List<DummyObject>(2);
        dolist.Add(new DummyObject("test1", (Decimal)25.36));
        dolist.Add(new DummyObject("test2", (Decimal)0.698));
        XmlSerializer dolistxs = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<DummyObject>));
        dolistxs.Serialize(Console.Out, dolist);
        Console.Read(); //  <--- Right here
    }
}

Alternatively, you can simply add a breakpoint on the last line.

Press Ctrl + F5 to run the program instead of F5.