i''ve posted a long time ago about debugging in win32. i wonder how all you guys do it. I know about the TextOut() method, but i just miss the good ol'' cout and printf. this is the major thing that''s preventing me from porting it to win32. a2k

I always use log files, they are easy to use, if you wish you can use the good old fopen() function series!

Logfiles, MessageBox(), using MSVC++ debugger. MessageBox() is good for showing stuff to the user, better than textout because it suspends the whole program waiting for you to click OK.

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#pragma twice

sharewaregames.20m.com

I''ve found that using consoles is a fairly effective way of debugging. I also have a function pointer to the type of log I want to generate (messageBoxes, file, or console) so I can change it later, if I wanted to change the app to fullscreen for example (since consoles only work in windowed applications).

is there a way to open up and output to a console, even with a win32 application? also, i thought about outputting to a log file. i guess you guys really DO do that. isn''t that kinda slow? (but hey, maybe it''s time to think about coding a replay feature....)

but anyway, with the log files, you cannot effectively "check" what you see on the screen with the values in realtime, can you? i guess this is where the message boxes come in?

like, supposing i wanted to test for a distance from a point to a plane in realtime, while i move the point around. i want to be able to see the distance values, and to see when it changes negative and stuff like that...

a2k

OutputDebugString(char *); outputs to the debugger.

To log a string to a file I created this function:

1) Outputs debug string to debugger
2) Logs error to file

BOOL LogError(char *error, char *filename)
{
FILE *error_file;
char *temp = malloc(strlen(error) * sizeof(char) + sizeof("\n"));

if (!strchr(error, ''\n'')) /* Check for \n at end of error, if no \n add one */
{
strcpy(temp, error);
strcat(temp, "\n");

OutputDebugString(temp);

error = malloc(strlen(temp) * sizeof(char) + 1);
strcpy(error, temp);
}

OutputDebugString(error);

if (!(error_file = fopen(filename, "a")))
{
OutputDebugString("Error opening log file!");
}

fwrite(error, strlen(error), 1, error_file);

fclose(error_file);

return TRUE;
}

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A wise man once said "A person with half a clue is more dangerous than a person with or without one."