Creating simple windows console apps

[davil]

Hi to all,

I was just wondering how anyone here would go about creating simple console apps for windows. All I would need to be able to do would be maybe some simple text manipulation, maybe some basic n00b TCP stuff, it would be great if I could do some DB stuff, perhaps SQLite??? Anyway I've done a bit of VB in the past but all this DOT NET stuff is confusing for a n00b like me. also I'd like to do something with free software, mainly because I'm a bit poor at the moment. The main reason for this post is because we have a logon script at work here (Batch) and I have it calling multiple types of scripts, VBS, AUTOIT exes, Freebasic EXES, all written by me for reporting on each PC on our network and some using other peoples software also. I would like to clean it all up to make it all one script for simplicity and so it's easier to remove some of the stuff that's out of date because there's way too much going on at the moment. I'm considering KiXtart but I'm not sure it will be any better.

I'm a big fan of PHP + MySQL and I'm getting to grips with both of those languages fairly well. I like the way PHP just works without being too strict. It's easy to write functions and I'm slowly starting to understand OOP almost because the way PHP handles it is just so easy. It's just a pity PHP can't be used to create simple EXEs

Also in the past I've used AUTOIT v3 to do a lot of my scripting here but lately it's giving a lot of vague errors on windows 2000 machines even though it works fine on our XP machines here..I need something that just works!!!....

I suppose I could just clean up the scripts manually like I used to but it just seems very inefficient.

P.S. I've also seen these PHP "compilers" lately and I was wondering if any of them are worth trying:

ZZEE PHPExe

Priadoblender

[PLuNK]

C++

[RogueHart]

c++ or c#

c++ because if you ever decide to use a different platform such as linux you will be able to use the same language

c# because for windows applications its quickly becoming an industry standard.

[davil]

Thanks guys. would have replied sooner but was expecting an email to tell me I had replies. I'll fix my profile now. Thanks again. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

[MRGRIM]

If you like the way PHP works try Python.

[Chris S]

Davil,

If you're shying away from the MS products because of cost, you can use both Visual C# Express and SQL Server Express for free.

[Erroneous]

Well since almost all my college courses I've had so far are in C, I do recommend it. C++ is nice, but if you aren't doing any OOP there really isn't a need for it even though it doesn't force you into objects like C# or Java. Also, if you learn C then you can very easily transition into C++. Java is pretty good as well, and there are compilers you can use that make actual exe's that don't rely on the Java VM.

If you simply want scripting, try the Shell scripting language used in Linux. I believe you can execute a shell script if you have cygwin installed using sh.exe or bash.exe. Be sure to have the full path for the used commands like ls unless you plan on putting the cygwin bin directory in your PATH. This is more complicated to get working than BAT or VBS but it does work quite well in porting over to Linux.

If you want an antiquated scripting language that works on all windows machines, there's always BAT files...but you can't get very complicated with these. Also, you can use Visual Basic and make .vbs files. Still is scripting so it doesn't require a compiler and you can do most of the things you want to do, though I haven't made a vbs in years.

[Deveant]

biggest issue your going to face, is if .net is confusing, then you may loose interest in languages like C, C++, and Java rather quickly, there the harder languages to learn, but the are the better ones to learn.

[davil]

Thanks everyone for your ideas etc. I've found that autohotkey does the job for the time being. Doing the stuff I used to use autoit for. Anyway I'm seriously considering doing a college course in software development soon but for the moment, I'm going to keep it simple. Thanks again.