Better alternative for Print() for debugging

Works fine for me. What error messages do you get in the experts tab in the terminal?

it's ok got it working (didn't switch capture on). I can see all sorts of benefits using DebugView

but what's the alternative in MT4?

thanks again for your help.

Thanks for the info, installed latest version of Debugview 4.81 on windows 7 and changed call to OutputDebugStringW() and it works fine. This will be a lot of help with reducing debugging time.

i dont know how mt4 worked back then in 2010 but your code prints only the first character, so i came up that string is unicode and OutputDebugStringW will do it's job perfectly fine.

tho all these arguments are not necessary, Print is a variadic function and unless mt4 devs did a bad job and implemented half of the stuff, there must be some functions like va_list, va_start, va_arg and so forth exactly like on C

Great! Thank you! It works

[I have the strangest of bugs that crashes on starting mt4 and when saving templates, that's taken several days of my time. I've narrowed it down to one routine in one indicator and I really needed this DebugView tool. Then surprise, surprise, with this logging installed the crashing stops @#%$! ha ha!]

The logging code that works is:

Im using it!

Thanks for this. I also had to use OutputDebugStringW in place of OutputDebugStringA and it now works fine.

Can anyone help how to use it with videos?

I tried ,
but no succeed

Thank you everyone for the comments and especially 7bit for this little trick, my god if I just knew about this before I could have saved so much more time!

Much thank you @7bit and everyone contributing! Just tried the trick, and it works on my MT4 Script! Awesome!!
Just want to mention the one posted by @PaulT7 above works ! That's the one I use.

I know this thread is old but it still comes up when you search for MQL debugging alternatives, so figured I'd share what I've been working on.
If you're still wrestling with Print() and OutputDebugStringA workarounds — there's now a proper debugging option that runs entirely inside VS Code. The MQL Clangd extension lets you set actual breakpoints in your code, hit start, and watch your variables update live in a debug panel. No more scattering Print() everywhere and staring at the journal tab.
The way it works: you place breakpoints in the editor margin, the extension automatically injects telemetry into a temporary copy of your EA (never touches your real build), and when your EA hits those breakpoints on a chart, the variable states stream back into VS Code. Local variables, function parameters, class members — it picks them up automatically without you having to list what to watch. You can also add // @watch myVar if you want something specific.
A couple of things that might be relevant to this thread specifically:

1. No more buffering issues. The extension also ships with a LiveLog library that flushes to disk instantly — so if you still prefer logging for some things, PrintLive() replaces Print() without the MetaTrader buffering delays that drove everyone here crazy.
2. You don't lose your debug output. Everything shows up in VS Code, not buried in the MT journal sorted bottom-to-top.
3. Zero cleanup afterwards. Since the instrumentation goes into a temp build, your actual source stays clean. No more forgetting to remove 50 Print() lines before going live.

Free and open-source: VS Code Marketplace | Open VSX Registry | GitHub