Writing Console-Mode Applications in Visual Basic
Visual Basic has always been there for those of us that have wanted to write windowed applications. What a lot of people don't know is that VB can also be used to write windowless applications, where the application has no standard user interface of it's own. This is all fine but what about the good old console? Sometimes it is the best way to provide a simple interface to a user. It doesn't use up much memory and console applications tend to be smaller than windowed applications. Most people think it is impossible to write a console-based application in VB because there isn't a project for it in the New Project dialog but I'm going to show you how it can indeed be done.
A console-based program in Visual Basic starts off with a windowless base. This is because since there is no built-in support by VB for console work, we have to write all of the low-level stuff by hand. So, start a new Standard EXE project and remove the default form (Form1) from the project. Add a module and you're set. That one module is the only component that is needed in a console project, just like a windowless project.
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This article was originally published on November 20, 2002