Migrating from QBasic v 1.1 to VBCCE

[logamuthu]

I am migrating from QBasic v 1.1 to VBCCE.

But I have problems with importing .bas files of QBasic into VBCCE.

Mostly with syntax since I am not familiar with VB equivalents of QBasic Commands.

Can somebody pls help me!

I can send a copy of a .bas file - 16699cst.bas - if it would help me to get help in this forum.

Pls help ASAP.

[Nightwalker83]

It would probably be easier to just rewrite the program in VB! What does the QBasic code do?

[DataMiser]

What is VBCCE? That is one that I have never saw before.

I had a quick glance at one of the files and I see that you are using a Var named Type$ which will need to be changed for sure as Type is used in VB to create a structure and can not be used as a variable name, Return$ is also an issue.

Aside from that all the Locate and Print statements would need to be changed to do it properly.

[dilettante]

Actually there was (is) a VB5CCE available for free and a VB6CCE that was only ever available in standalone (not a full Visual Studio) SKUs of Visual FoxPro 6.0.

CCE = Control Creation Edition, and was primarily meant to be used to create ActiveX controls for use in IE web pages client-side.

I'm pretty sure that the ActiveX control Project type is the only type that it supports compiling for. Anything else like a standard EXE Project can only be run from within the IDE. While limited by this, it also means the CCE version was useful as an introductory training version of VB5 and so it was commonly included with intro programming books on companion CDs.

The later VB6 Learning Edition included on later books' CDs was probably a variation on VB6CCE with similar limitations.


I have converted large QBasic programs to VB6 in the past, but I had the advantage that these were mostly "batch" tools for doing bulk data reformatting so they had relatively few UI issues.

Anything with a lot of user interaction is a ton of work, and QBasic code tended to be written in notoriously awful fashion. There tended to be little attempt to isolate the more easily ported computational logic from UI code and everything is one giant tangle. Of course these days there is a lot of really awful VB6 and VB.Net being written with the same disease.


One thing that is driving people away from QBasic is that a console window can't be full-screened anymore in modern versions of Windows. Another is the way people have been herded cattle-like to 64-bit systems (a ploy to keep PC prices high more than anything of real value). 64-bit Windows has no 16-bit WOW subsystem so QBasic doesn't run there anymore.

Of course the last OS to ship with QBasic was Win2K where it was an optional item on the CDs, so XP users were actually working in a gray area legally to use QBasic there at all: it had to be stolen from an earlier system.


Being so late in the game it might make more sense to bite the bullet and get the current VB.Net Express. It is free and doesn't have the limitations of a VBCCE.

Without any VB5/6 experience you may as well take the plunge, you have little to lose.