Tip Bank

DevX - Software Development Resource

Write applications that take arguments

C# has a nice feature that VB.NET lacks: the ability to define a Main procedure that takes an array of strings, each one containig one of the arguments passed on

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Create a command-line filter utility

The Console class exposes two properties that make it very simple to create command-line utilities that work as filters, exactly like the FIND and MORE utilities that are provided with

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Create console apps that return an exit code

Writing an application that returns an ERRORLEVEL to Dos is quite difficult in VB6, because you are forced to use a Windows API that ends the application immediately, thus preventing

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Duplicate the SET operating system command

The Environment.GetEnvironmentVariables property returns the list of all the environment variables, as an IDictionary object. If you want to display them sorted by their name, as the SET command does

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Take advantage of the new math functions

The System.Math class exposes several static methods that let you perform many common operations. These functions replace the VB6 functions with same name, but there are a few new functions

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Retrieve Windows and System directories

In VB.NET you don’t need to call the GetWindowsDirectory and GetSystemDirectory API functions to retrieve the path the Windows and System directories. Retrieving the System directory is as simple as

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Determine the Windows version

You don’t need to call any Windows API function in VB.NET to determine which version of Windows your application is running on, because this information is exposed by the Environment.OSVersion