OutputDebugString + DebugView = not tabs!

Question

I am dumping \t delimited data using using OutputDebugString and then use ex-Sysinternals DebugView to capture it.

The problem is that all the data in DebugView appear to be space delimited, hence I need to perfrorm CTRL+H "\x20" "t" to replace spaces with the tabs before I can use it (I really need tab delimited data).

Is there anyway to tell DebugView not to replace tabs with spaces? Or maybe there is a better tool available to capture output of the OutputDebugString function?

Any ideas are very welcome!

Have you tried logging to a file? (File\Log to file...) – Eugen Constantin Dinca Mar 16 '10 at 07:19 — Eugen Constantin Dinca, Mar 16 '10 at 07:19
tried, didn't help - it outputs \x20-s, not \t-s – Steve Mar 16 '10 at 07:23 — Steve, Mar 16 '10 at 07:23

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 22 '10 at 17:43

6

It seems this is a "feature" in DebugView. I have tried with Hoo Wintail and this dude collects tabs without any problem. So I see 3 solutions:

You get Hoo Wintail (highly recommended)
You write your on tool (look here for some idea how to do it or even get a complete one)
You redirect to file.

I strongly vote for option 1.

answered Mar 22 '10 at 17:43

Michal Sznajder

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Looks interesting. Really like the idea of realtime monitoring of trace log files located at FTP. What could be really cool (not sure if such tool exist or not) - to be able watch logs which are located on the remote unix servers accessible with SFTP. Can someone recomend such a tool? – Steve Mar 24 '10 at 02:30

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 16 '10 at 07:07

1

Why not write them on a local log-file ? (only on debug mode ?)

answered Mar 16 '10 at 07:07

Aristos

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 16 '10 at 07:38

0

You can use multiple spaces instead of a tab.

answered Mar 16 '10 at 07:38

zproxy

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 16 '10 at 07:57

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DebugOutput and DebugView are intended for situations as implied by their name: debug. They are not intended to replace file-save functionality.

You are probably in the situation where analyzing the debug output means analyzing the tab-delimited format. Find another character that can be used instead of tab, e.g. | or @ or ^. Then open the debug output in an advanced editor (e.g. UltraEdit) and convert the character back to Tab.

answered Mar 16 '10 at 07:57

Patrick

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This is what I do now. I though I could eliminate that extra step. – Steve Mar 16 '10 at 22:02

OutputDebugString + DebugView = not tabs!

4 Answers4