How do I print to the debug output window in a Win32 app?

I was looking for a way to do this myself and figured out a simple solution.

I'm assuming that you started a default Win32 Project (Windows application) in Visual Studio, which provides a "WinMain" function. By default, Visual Studio sets the entry point to "SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS". You need to first change this by going to:

Project -> Properties -> Linker -> System -> Subsystem

And select "Console (/SUBSYSTEM:CONSOLE)" from the drop-down list.

Now, the program will not run, since a "main" function is needed instead of the "WinMain" function.

So now you can add a "main" function like you normally would in C++. After this, to start the GUI program, you can call the "WinMain" function from inside the "main" function.

The starting part of your program should now look something like this:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

// Main function for the console
int main(){

    // Calling the wWinMain function to start the GUI program
    // Parameters:
    // GetModuleHandle(NULL) - To get a handle to the current instance
    // NULL - Previous instance is not needed
    // NULL - Command line parameters are not needed
    // 1 - To show the window normally
    wWinMain(GetModuleHandle(NULL), NULL,NULL, 1); 

    system("pause");
    return 0;
}

// Function for entry into GUI program
int APIENTRY wWinMain(_In_ HINSTANCE hInstance,
                     _In_opt_ HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
                     _In_ LPWSTR    lpCmdLine,
                     _In_ int       nCmdShow)
{
    // This will display "Hello World" in the console as soon as the GUI begins.
    cout << "Hello World" << endl;
.
.
.

Result of my implementation

Now you can use functions to output to the console in any part of your GUI program for debugging or other purposes.

This works for C++ under MSVC, and even for GUI applications when being run via Debugger. It also gets omitted entirely from release builds. It even uses a C++ stringstream for flexible input.

#include <iostream>

#ifdef _MSC_VER
#include "Windows.h"
#endif

#if !defined(NDEBUG) && defined(_MSC_VER)
#define LOG(args) {std::stringstream _ss; _ss << __FILE__ << "@" << __LINE__ << ": " \
    << args << std::endl; OutputDebugString(_ss.str().c_str());}
#else
#define LOG(args)
#endif

Use like:

LOG("some message " << someValue);