You can simply press Ctrl + F5 instead of F5 to run the built code. Then it will prompt you to press any key to continue. Or you can use this line -> system("pause"); at the end of the code to make it wait until you press any key.
Before the end of your code, insert this line: system("pause"); This will keep the console until you hit a key. It also printed "Press any key to continue . . ." for me.
Start the project with Ctrl + F5 instead of just F5 . The console window will now stay open with the Press any key to continue . . . message after the program exits.
Keep Console Open With the Ctrl + F5 Shortcut in C# The best approach for keeping our console window open after the execution of code is to run it with the Ctrl + F5 shortcut of the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE.
the issue here is that their Hello World Program is showing up then it would immediately close.
why is that?
Because it's finished. When console applications have completed executing and return from their main
method, the associated console window automatically closes. This is expected behavior.
If you want to keep it open for debugging purposes, you'll need to instruct the computer to wait for a key press before ending the app and closing the window.
The Console.ReadLine
method is one way of doing that. Adding this line to the end of your code (just before the return
statement) will cause the application to wait for you to press a key before exiting.
Alternatively, you could start the application without the debugger attached by pressing Ctrl+F5 from within the Visual Studio environment, but this has the obvious disadvantage of preventing you from using the debugging features, which you probably want at your disposal when writing an application.
The best compromise is probably to call the Console.ReadLine
method only when debugging the application by wrapping it in a preprocessor directive. Something like:
#if DEBUG
Console.WriteLine("Press enter to close...");
Console.ReadLine();
#endif
You might also want the window to stay open if an uncaught exception was thrown. To do that you can put the Console.ReadLine();
in a finally
block:
#if DEBUG
try
{
//...
}
finally
{
Console.WriteLine("Press enter to close...");
Console.ReadLine();
}
#endif
Instead of using
Console.Readline()
Console.Read()
Console.ReadKey()
you can run your program using Ctrl+F5 (if you are in Visual Studio). Then Visual Studio will keep the console window open, until you press a key.
Note: You cannot debug your code in this approach.
I assume the reason you don't want it to close in Debug mode, is because you want to look at the values of variables etc. So it's probably best to just insert a break-point on the closing "}" of the main function. If you don't need to debug, then Ctrl-F5 is the best option.
This behaves the same for CtrlF5 or F5.
Place immediately before end of Main
method.
using System.Diagnostics;
private static void Main(string[] args) {
DoWork();
if (Debugger.IsAttached) {
Console.WriteLine("Press any key to continue . . .");
Console.ReadKey();
}
}
I'm a little bit late to the party, but: in Visual Studio 2019 for .NET Core projects the console doesn't close automatically by default. You can configure the behaviour through menu Tools → Options → Debugging → General → Automatically close the console when debugging stops. If you get your console window automatically closing, check if the mentioned setting is not set.
The same applies to the .NET Framework new style console projects:
<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
<PropertyGroup>
<OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
<TargetFramework>net472</TargetFramework>
</PropertyGroup>
</Project>
The old style .NET Framework project still unconditionally close the console at the end (as of Visual Studio 16.0.1).
Reference: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-core-tooling-update-for-visual-studio-2019-preview-2/
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