Thanks for answering my questions.
I'm not trying to convince you to use Visual Studio (or any other debugger) but maybe you're missing on some useful tools:
- steps would be VS breakpoints with the addition of the different step possibilities (step a line, step to cursor, step out, conditional breakpoints...), with the code context and you can stop anywhere you want;
- variable declaration, scan and print are VS watch window (or autos window or locals window), without declaration (you can see any variable), they are updated and displayed when you step and you can see any "valid" variable (global, memory address, or in the current stack frame. You can also go up or down stack frames);
- calling a function can be done in the watch window of VS without declaration;
- seashell_print is OutputDebugString in VS;
And all that without compiling or restarting the program.
As for the way you are pausing the execution (
busy waiting), would it work on a single core system (would slow everything) or multi threaded applications ? The Wikipedia article suggests
alternatives.