What's the difference between System.Diagnostics.Trace, System.Diagnostics.Debug and System.Console?

Jakub Arnold

As far as I understand, System.Console will write to STDOUT by default, but what about System.Diagnostics.Trace and System.Diagnostics.Debug? What are the default behaviors, and are they configurable in any way?

It also seems that different people use different things (on the internet), but I'm assuming that most of what I've found is wrong, since there should be specific semantics for each of these, right? And if so, are there any frameworks (like ASP.NET or WPF) that make special use of these?

Also one last question, what are the rules of thumb for picking which one of these to use?

Scott Chamberlain

Debug and Trace both write out to the same location, the Listeners collection. By default it is routed to Visual Studio's Debug window, however you can put code in your app.config file to redirect it to other locations when you are not debugging.

The difference between Debug and Trace is all of the methods in Debug only write out when the DEBUG compilation symbol is set (default on for debug, off for release) when the symbol is not set the methods are never called in your code. Trace looks for the TRACE symbol (default on for both debug and release). Other that that, the two classes are identical. In fact if you modify Debug.Listeners to add a new listener it will also modify Trace.Listeners as both just point to the internal static property TraceInternal.Listeners

As for picking which one to use, Do you want diagnostic information to show up in release and debug mode? use Trace, Debug only? use Debug. Do you want it to be visible to a end user without a debugger attached? use Console or add a console trace listener.

Collected from the Internet

Please contact [email protected] to delete if infringement.

edited at
0

Comments

0 comments
Login to comment

Related

Where does System.Diagnostics.Debug.Write output appear?

System.Diagnostics.Trace - correct way to log exceptions

Does System.Diagnostics.Trace have any performance degredation?

WCF System Diagnostics generates additional logs with GUID

Output System.Diagnostics.Debug to Console

System.Diagnostics.Tracing.EventSource vs System.Diagnostics.Trace

Application Insights - System.Diagnostics.Trace.* - What are these used for?

System.Diagnostics.Trace class in notepad++

How to create a System.Diagnostics.Process array

Visual Studio System.Diagnostics.Debug while not running in debug mode

How is Visual Studio or Rider reading messages written using System.Diagnostics.Trace.Write?

System.Diagnostics.Trace vs. ILogger

'Enable system diagnostics' missing in release pipeline

Azure Devops Pipeline : Difference between system.debug and 'Enable system diagnostics'

PowerShell: what is System.IO.StreamWriter and System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo?

Is there a way to use System.Diagnostics.Process in an IAsyncEnumerator?

Why would I turn System.Diagnostics trace autoflush off?

System.Diagnostics.Tracing in Mono

System.Diagnostics.Trace or System.Diagnostics.WriteLine and CRM 2011 Plugin

What's the difference between system() and execve()

Razor not compiling System.Diagnostics.Tracing.EventLevel

What's the difference between a multiprocessor and a multiprocessing system?

Wcf - Get Request and Response with System.Diagnostics

Use of System.Diagnostics.PresentationTraceSources.SetTraceLevel() method

What's the difference between slab and buddy system?

Realm and the inclusion of System.Diagnostics.Debug nuget package

What are benefits of using System. Diagnostics.Switch?

System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert - how to disable in a .NET Core console app?

System.Diagnostics.ActivitySource.StartActivity returns null