What is console?

[Luis Ortega]

I ran across an app called console that contained a lot of text information, but I can't find any info on what it does.
Can anyone please advise on where I can read more about this app?
Is it like Windows registry in that if you mess with it it will screw up your system, or can it be cleaned out and if so, how?
Thanks for any help.

 

[TEG]

Console is the viewer for all the error messages and program errors that don't appear on the screen (like from the stderr file in C), it also logs what your computer does so that if there is a problem you can hopefully track it back to the cause. There is no registry, just the Library Folders, and you really can't screw up the system by clearing up the logs.

TEG

 

[Makosuke]

can it be cleaned out and if so, how?

The OS's automatic maintenance routines delete old logs without you having to do anything. Unless something isn't working properly, you'll notice that most of the messages in Console are no more than a week or so old. It's perfectly safe to ignore Console and all the logs it displays unless something specific is misbehaving.

 

[Luis Ortega]

Thanks, everyone.
I wasn't sure if it would just keep growing and become a huge space hog.
I read that people often refer to various files in OSX that can grow huge and might benefit from being cleared out or deleted, so I was wondering if this was one of them.
I Windows, the various temp folders can grow to huge sizes and if someone isn't aware of them they would not know to periodically delete their contents.