The Last Program You'll Ever Download

Saturday, March 19, 2005

The Clown utility of my FileTools collection (which can be found on the downloads page) now supports building and running from sources stored on a web server (which is yet another strike against security):

C:\Test>Clown /silent http://peisker.net/Echo.vb Hello World

The output:

Microsoft (R) Visual Basic .NET Compiler version 7.10.3052.4
for Microsoft (R) .NET Framework version 1.1.4322.573
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1987-2002. All rights reserved.

Hello
World

What's more, for C# and VB.NET source files, the commands to invoke the compiler (clown-build) and to run the resulting executable (clown-run) are now provided by default. This means no extra work for console apps; the following program can run as easily as a shell script by typing "Clown Echo.vb Hello World":

Public Module Echo
    Public Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)
        Dim s As String
        For Each s In args
            System.Console.WriteLine(s)
        Next s
    End Sub
End Module

I should make writing code even simpler. I'm thinking of wrapping modules and methods arround snippets of code, the way I support it in WebEdit.NET's Script AddIns.