Question

I have put some Console.WriteLine calls in to test, but they aren’t appearing in the output box?

public static ArrayList myDeliveries = new ArrayList();

public mainForm(){
    InitializeComponent();
}

private void mainForm_Load(object sender, EventArgs e){

    if (!File.Exists("../../MealDeliveries.txt")){
        MessageBox.Show("File not found!");
        return;
    }

    using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader("../../MealDeliveries.txt")){
        //first line is delivery name 
        string strDeliveryName = sr.ReadLine();
        Console.WriteLine("Test content");

        while (strDeliveryName != null){

            //other lines 
            Delivery d = new Delivery(
                strDeliveryName, 
                sr.ReadLine(),
                sr.ReadLine(), 
                sr.ReadLine(),
                sr.ReadLine(), 
                sr.ReadLine(),
                sr.ReadLine()
            );

            mainForm.myDeliveries.Add(d);

            //check for further values
            strDeliveryName = sr.ReadLine();
        }
    }

    displayDeliveries();


}


private void displayDeliveries(){

    lstDeliveryDetails.Items.Clear();
    Console.WriteLine("Test content");
    Console.WriteLine(mainForm.myDeliveries.Count);
    foreach (Delivery d in mainForm.myDeliveries){
        lstDeliveryDetails.Items.Add(d.DeliveryName);

    }
}

Can anyone help??

Answer 1

If you intend to use this output in production, then use the Trace class members. This makes the code portable, you can wire up different types of listeners and output to the console window, debug window, log file, or whatever else you like.

If this is just some temporary debugging code that you’re using to verify that certain code is being executed or has the correct values, then use the Debug class as Zach suggests.

If you absolutely must use the console, then you can attach a console in the program’s Main method.