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as the title suggests, i need to have 2 separate console windows in my application. one should be the "main" console, and the other should be an independent one that has its own inout and output streams. i've read that it's possible to do it using WIN API by creating a new process. i've considered this but i can't seem to get it working:
Extra consoles - C++ Forum
can anyone please shed some light for me or help me understand how to do it at all?
thanks
I can't test this idea since I haven't run windows in a while, but perhaps a poor-man's version could work like so:
1. Start two consoles and determine the pids of the cmd.exe's running in the two consoles by running the following command in each terminal (I've never used this command before, so I don't know if it'll work) :
wmic process get parentprocessid,name|find "WMIC"
2. Run your program in one of the consoles, passing in the two pids as command line arguments with the pid belonging to the current console first.
3. To write to the other console, you detach from the current one and attach to the other one, write something, then switch back.
The cmd.exe processes will keep the consoles open when you free them (if no process is using a console, it's destroyed). They also provide pids that you can use to (re)attach to the consoles.
Maybe someone could try this.
Code:#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdarg.h>
#include <windows.h>
DWORD pid_main, pid_other; // global for convenience
void print_other(const char *fmt, ...) {
FreeConsole();
AttachConsole(pid_other);
va_list va;
va_start(va, fmt);
vprintf(fmt, va);
va_end(va);
FreeConsole();
AttachConsole(pid_main);
}
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
if (argc != 3) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: dualconsole current_pid other_pid\n");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
pid_main = atoi(argv[1]);
pid_other = atoi(argv[2]);
printf("starting main\n");
print_other("starting other\n");
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i += 2) {
printf("%d\n", i);
print_other("%d\n", i + 1);
}
printf("done\n");
return 0;
}
thanks for the suggestions.
it seems logical to me but this code doesn't even display one console. i tried to get an input from the function that creates/deletes the console but it won't even stop there.
I found this, it might help, I have not read it.
Multiple consoles for a single application - CodeProject
I don't know what you mean by "this code doesn't even display one console". I said that YOU are supposed to open two consoles, determine the pids of the cmd.exe processes running in them, then run your program from one of the consoles, passing the pids as command line parameters (current console first).Quote:
Originally Posted by lmanukyan
The link userxbw found is actually quite excellent and if I was on windows that's probably what I would use (luckily, on linux it's easy to write to another console).
john.c, sorry. i guess it was too early in the morning for me to read carefully.
i just read it again and it makes sense now :D and also works and, so thanks!
but what i'd like to do is not to manually open the consoles but rather have the code to create the consoles. it is possible?
and btw so how can it be done on linux?
.....
That is the "poor man's" version, as I said. The other option is to start a "helper" process that opens in its own terminal and communicate with it through a (named?) pipe. That's apparently what the code linked by userxbw does. However, it's C++.Quote:
Originally Posted by lmanukyan
On linux, if you open two terminals and do ps on one of them you get something like:
PID TTY TIME CMD
22657 pts/18 00:00:00 bash
22804 pts/18 00:00:00 ps
The terminals are represented as objects in the file system (as is virtually everything on linux), and from the other terminal you can simply write to /dev/pts/18.
echo hello > /dev/pts/18
Alternatively you could write to the controlling process's stdout or stderr, so above we would write to the stdout of bash like so:
echo hello > /proc/22657/fd/1