Can you have multiple .net Consoles (as in Console.Writeline)

Question

It would be handy during debugging to have multiple consoles (not multiple monitors, which I already have). I am imagining something like Console.WriteLine(1, String1) whic

Answer 1

I had the same need and I found your question here in SO. A lot of years later :)

In fact, .NET doesn't have this capability, but we can simulate it by splitting the screen with a grid, using some buffering.

Here is an example:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace ConsoleApp1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void print(int x, int y, int n)
        {
            for(int i = 0; i < 20; i++)
            {
                Console.CursorLeft = x; Console.CursorTop = y++;
                Console.Write(new string(n.ToString().Last(), 60));
            }
        }

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var l = new List(new int[] { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 });

            while (true)
            {
                Console.Clear();
                Console.CursorVisible = false;

                for (int i = 0; i < l.Count; i++)
                {
                    print((i % 3) * 60, (i / 3) * 20, l[i]++);
                }

                Task.Delay(1000).Wait();
            }
        }
    }
}

So the screen is divided into a 3x3 grid and each screen is updated using the cursor position.

It could be packaged into a lib and a generic API, like you described:

Console.WriteLine(1, String1)
Console.WriteLine(2, String2)

Hope it helps someone.