Home and Learn: C# NET Course
How To Run Your C# Programmes
You can test your programme a number of ways. First, though, it has to be built. This is when everything is checked to see if there are any errors. Try this:
- From the View menu at the top of Visual C# Express, click Output. You'll see a window appear at the bottom.
- From the Build menu at the top of Visual C# Express, click Build Solution
- You should see the following report:
- Delete the semicolon from the end of your line of code
- Click Build > Build Solution again
- Examine the output window
The final line is this:
Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped
That's telling you that everything is OK.
Now try this:
This time, you should see these two lines at the end of the report:
Compile complete -- 1 errors, 0 warnings
Build: 0 succeeded or up-to-date, 1 failed, 0 skipped
So it's telling you that it couldn't build your solution because there was 1 error.
Put the semicolon back at the end of the line. Now click Debug from the menu at the top of Visual C# Express. From the Debug menu, select Start Debugging.
You should see a black DOS window appear and then disappear. Your programme has run successfully!
To actually see your line of text, click Debug > Start Without Debugging. You should now see this:
And that's your programme! Have a look at the Solution Explorer on the right. Because the project has been built, you'll see more files under Debug:
Or this:
We now have a ConsoleApplication1.exe and ConsoleApplication1.pdb. The exe file is an executable programme, and it appears in the bin/debug folder. Switch back to Windows Explorer, if you still have it open. You'll see the exe file there:
You could, if you wanted, create a desktop shortcut to this exe file. When you double click the desktop shortcut, the programme will run.
But that's enough of Console Applications - we'll move on to creating Windows Applications.
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