Windows C++: How can I redirect stderr for calls to fprintf?

Question

I am wrapping existing C++ code from a BSD project in our own custom wrapper and I want to integrate it to our code with as few changes as possible. This code uses fprintf to print to stderr in order to log / report errors.

I want to redirect this to an alternative place within the same process. On Unix I have done this with a socketpair and a thread: one end of the socket is where I send stderr (via a call to dup2) and the other end is monitored in a thread, where I can then process the output.

This does not work on Windows though because a socket is not the same as a file handle.

All documents I have found on the web show how to redirect output from a child process, which is not what I want. How can I redirect stderr within the same process getting a callback of some sort when output is written? (and before you say so, I've tried SetStdHandle but cannot find any way to make this work)...

Answer 1

You can use a similar technique on Windows, you just need to use different words for the same concepts. :) This article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682499.aspx uses a win32 pipe to handle I/O from another process, you just have to do the same thing with threads within the same process. Of course, in your case all output to stderr from anywhere in the process will be redirected to your consumer.

Actually, other pieces of the puzzle you may need are _fdopen and _open_osfhandle. In fact, here's a related example from some code I released years ago:

DWORD CALLBACK DoDebugThread(void *)
{
    AllocConsole();
    SetConsoleTitle("Copilot Debugger");
    // The following is a really disgusting hack to make stdin and stdout attach
    // to the newly created console using the MSVC++ libraries. I hope other
    // operating systems don't need this kind of kludge.. :)
    stdout->_file = _open_osfhandle((long)GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE), _O_TEXT);
    stdin->_file  = _open_osfhandle((long)GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE), _O_TEXT);
    debug();
    stdout->_file = -1;
    stdin->_file  = -1;
    FreeConsole();
    CPU_run();
    return 0;
}   

In this case, the main process was a GUI process which doesn't start with stdio handles at all. It opens a console, then shoves the right handles into stdout and stdin so the debug() function (which was designed as a stdio interactive function) can interact with the newly created console. You should be able to open some pipes and do the same sort of thing to redirect stderr.