old school -- command line executable

[DaveAMS]

I'm creating a good "old fashioned" command line program: no forms, no visual interface. Just a bunch of modules and a sub main(). Reads command line options.

Now my problem: I can't seem to find any way to return text to the console (command line interface). I want to return status information, but I can't find any functionality to do this. Basically I'm looking for the equivalent of a printf or cout...is this possible?

[numtel]

have you heard of qbasic? lol... no but seriously, that's probably the easiest way to go unlress there's lots of apis, if there is lots of apis then thats good you know how to use them because i takes a whole bunch to make a console app in vb. i know i've seen this tutorial somewhere, i'm lookin...

[numtel]

http://209.120.143.185/showthread.ph...le+application here ya go, should be what you need

[DaveAMS]

thx for the quick reply. I *do* miss qbasic...esp the worm game. I *really* miss my unix days...writing code in vi, command line c compiler...good old days.

I figured there might not be an easy way to do this...oh well. Price of progress.

[JoshT]

Originally posted by DaveAMS
I'm creating a good "old fashioned" command line program: no forms, no visual interface. Just a bunch of modules and a sub main(). Reads command line options.

Now my problem: I can't seem to find any way to return text to the console (command line interface). I want to return status information, but I can't find any functionality to do this. Basically I'm looking for the equivalent of a printf or cout...is this possible?

If you're app is written in VB6 (or earlier, probably), and it is run from the command prompt (cmd.exe), you need to binary patch your compiled executable with a utility called mkconsole.exe to get your standard output to go back to cmd.exe - use the APIs GetStdHandle and WriteFile.

The mkconsole tool and source code are on this site - kinda hidden, look for console stuff.
http://mvps.org/st-software/

[macai]

Can someone just write a little module with a sub and a function?

The sub being print to commandline, and the function being read
the commandline.

[BuggyProgrammer]

wouldn't it be easier to just write C console instead...

[macai]

No! Besides, i don't know C, and if i were to learn a second language, it would be Delphi, not C++.