AllocConsole() not displaying cout

Question

I have a DLL where I use AllocConsole() and cout to display data for debugging purposes.
It used to work fine but since I updated my compiler (Visual Studio 2012) to the

Answer 1

This works using vs2015 with the line std::cout.clear()

if (!AllocConsole())
    MessageBox(NULL, L"The console window was not created", NULL, MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);

FILE* fp;

freopen_s(&fp, "CONOUT$", "w", stdout);

printf("Hello console on\n");

std::cout.clear();

std::cout << "Cout line one." << std::endl;

cout << "Cout line two." << std::endl;

MessageBox(NULL, (L"Pause to see console output."), (L"Pause Here"), MB_OK | MB_SYSTEMMODAL | MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);

fclose(fp);

if (!FreeConsole())
    MessageBox(NULL, L"Failed to free the console!", NULL, MB_ICONEXCLAMATION);

Answer 2

I vaguely recall that you might need to redirect the stdout to the console. I might be wrong though (since you had your code working earlier):

AllocConsole();
freopen("CONOUT$", "w", stdout);
std::cout << "This works" << std::endl;

Answer 3

After allocating a new console via AllocConsole(), you need to re-open the standard streams (stdout, stderr, stdin) before you can use them.

You can do so by using freopen (in newer versions of Visual Studio you need to use freopen_s) Example:

FILE *fDummy;
freopen_s(&fDummy, "CONIN$", "r", stdin);
freopen_s(&fDummy, "CONOUT$", "w", stderr);
freopen_s(&fDummy, "CONOUT$", "w", stdout);

If you want to use the deprecated freopen you can disable the warning by #defineing _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS.

If you also want to use the wide-character streams (std::wcout, std::wcerr, etc...), you need to call SetStdHandle() to set a new output handle for your process. You can get the required file handle for this by calling CreateFile() with CONOUT$ / CONIN$ as file name:

HANDLE hConOut = CreateFile(_T("CONOUT$"), GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL);
SetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE, hConOut);

Additionally, if you tried to use one of the streams before re-opening them, they will have the std::ios_base::badbit and std::ios_base::failbit set in their iostate, so subsequent writes / reads will be ignored.
You can reset the stream state with .clear(), after which you can read/write from/to the stream again:

std::cout.clear();
std::cin.clear();

Heres a full example of re-opening all the streams after AllocConsole():

void CreateConsole()
{
    if (!AllocConsole()) {
        // Add some error handling here.
        // You can call GetLastError() to get more info about the error.
        return;
    }

    // std::cout, std::clog, std::cerr, std::cin
    FILE* fDummy;
    freopen_s(&fDummy, "CONOUT$", "w", stdout);
    freopen_s(&fDummy, "CONOUT$", "w", stderr);
    freopen_s(&fDummy, "CONIN$", "r", stdin);
    std::cout.clear();
    std::clog.clear();
    std::cerr.clear();
    std::cin.clear();

    // std::wcout, std::wclog, std::wcerr, std::wcin
    HANDLE hConOut = CreateFile(_T("CONOUT$"), GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL);
    HANDLE hConIn = CreateFile(_T("CONIN$"), GENERIC_READ | GENERIC_WRITE, FILE_SHARE_READ | FILE_SHARE_WRITE, NULL, OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, NULL);
    SetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE, hConOut);
    SetStdHandle(STD_ERROR_HANDLE, hConOut);
    SetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE, hConIn);
    std::wcout.clear();
    std::wclog.clear();
    std::wcerr.clear();
    std::wcin.clear();
}