C# console program - stop STDIN from going to STDOUT

Question

I'm writing a simple console app in C#, .NET 2.0. It starts new threads using a threading timer, while it interprets commands on the main thread.

I currently take three commands: P - Pause C - Continue Q - Quit

This functionality works quite well, but unfortunately when I type P, C, or Q (or any other character for that matter), the character goes to STDOUT. Is there a way I can stop this programatically? Also it'd be useful to know if I could disable and re-enable STDIN -> STDOUT.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Sounds like you are using

Console.ReadKey();

Which clearly states in the documentation that it prints to the screen and if you don't want to output to the screen you should use the overloaded version

Console.ReadKey(true);

Which does not output.

Answer 2

First idea, can you set up a separate stream so outputing to STDOUT will not interfere with your program? If not, you should be able to point STDOUT to a different file descriptor while your code is being executed:

  FILE *realStdout= STDOUT;
  STDOUT = fopen("filepath", "w");
  //code
  fclose(STDOUT);
  STDOUT = realStdout;