Visual c# forms and command line interface

Question

Hello, I'm trying to implement a command line interface inside of a windows form, I've looked into PDCurses but I'm not sure if thats where I want to be. Any one have any suggestions for this?

Answer 1

There are two basic approaches, though I'm not sure which goal you're aiming for:

If you want to have an actual command window inside your app:

• Create a text box. Let them type whatever they want.
• When the user hits ENTER, read the current line and use the System.Diagnostic.Process classes to execute that line and retrieve the resulting text.
• Display the resulting text in your textbox.
• Optional: Prevent the textbox from getting too large by throwing away lines from the top when it gets too big.

If you want to simply create a custom command-processing window:

• Find a way to parse the input and provide syntax errors.
• Create an object model that corresponds to the features your app will make available to your console.
• Connect the parser/interpreter to your object model.