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Lab # 1 - Your First C++ Program Name ___________________________________ COMP 150/ 10 Points
OBJECTIVE
The goal of this lab is to become familiar with the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005 IDE (Integrated Development Environment), to compile and run a C++ program, and to observe several types of common compile-time errors. The IDE provides a broad set of development tools for completing, testing, and refining your program.
STEP 1 – Create a Project
In this step you will create a project that contains a single C++ source file.
- After you have logged into Windows XP, start up Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2005. It’s located under Start All Programs Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Once it is loaded, you may want to maximize it, forcing it to cover the entire screen.
- If this is the first time you have used Visual Studio you will see the dialog box below asking you to set the default environment settings. Select “Visual C++ Development Settings” and click the Start Visual Studio button.
- The first thing you will see is the “Start Page”. This page allows you to set some profile information, open a new project or select a previously open one, and browse on-line information about .NET. We will not need to use this page.
- Before you can write a program, you must create a new project. Create a new project by selecting from the menu File New Project… The “New Project” dialog box will be displayed. A. Under “Project Types:” select Visual C++ and then Win. B. Under “Visual Studio Installed Templates:” select the Win32 Console Application.
C. Type “lab1” for the Name of your project. Then change the Location to M:\Projects. This will save your work to the networked M drive which is accessible from any Harding computer.
D. Press the “OK” button. This will close the dialog box and display an application wizard. Press Next and then check the “Empty project” checkbox. Then click the Finish button. A “solution” named lab1 will be created along with the project lab1. A solution can contain one or more projects. In this case, the lab1 solution contains the lab1 project. Usually the project and solution names will be the same.
- You will now create a C++ program file that will be added to your project. A. From the menu select Project Add New Item… The “Add New Item” dialog box will pop up with a variety of file types that can be created. B. Select “Code” on the left and the “C++ File (.cpp)” option on the right. C. Give the file a name by entering “dec2bin.cpp” in the Name field. D. Click the Add button. This will create the file, displaying an empty window entitled “dec2bin.cpp”.
your file. Once the file is saved, the asterisk will disappear. Note that even if you do not save your program, Visual C++ will automatically save it for you when you compile your program (in the next step).
- From the “Build” menu, select the “Build Solution” option. This will do two things: 1) compile the program and 2) build the executable if there were no compiling errors. At the bottom of the VS.NET IDE, you will see the compiler messages as it attempts to compile and build the application. If you typed in the program correctly, you will see the following message shortly:
1>------ Build started: Project: lab1, Configuration: Debug Win32 ------ 1>Compiling... 1>dec2bin.cpp 1>Linking... 1>Embedding manifest... 1>Build log was saved at "file://m:\Projects\lab1\lab1\Debug\BuildLog.htm" 1>lab1 - 0 error(s), 0 warning(s) ========== Build: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
- If the dialog box says there are one or more errors , then you have mistyped something. Scrolling back up the compiler message window a little will reveal the errors encountered when compiling the program. Double-clicking on the error message will move the cursor in the dec2bin.cpp window close to where the error occurred. Syntax errors almost always occur at or above the line indicated by the compiler. Sometimes one error will kick-off one or more additional errors. It’s always best to fix the first error and recompile to see if the rest go away. If you have difficulty correcting the error(s), seek assistance from the instructor so that you may continue with the lab.
STEP 3 - Run the Program
In this step you will run your program and make some observations about it.
- Once you have a program that compiles without errors, run your program by pressing Control-F5. Your program will then run in a black window.
- When the program asks you a yes/no question, you must respond with a lowercase “y” character for the program to treat your answer as a “yes.” Everything else, including “Y”, is treated as a “no” response.
- Use the program to convert the decimal value 12345 to its binary representation. Write the binary number in the space below.
- Enter some smaller numbers to verify that your program is working.
- When you are finished converting numbers, answer ‘n’ to the question that asks if you would like to convert another number. The window will say, “Press any key to continue.” Press a key to close the window.
Note: Occasionally when you make changes to your program and attempt to run it before building it, the following dialog box will appear:
Just press the Yes button, and the project will be re-compiled before running. If there were errors in your program, you will see the following dialog box:
Just click No and try to fix the error(s).
STEP 4 - Syntax Errors
In this step you will introduce some errors into the program in a controlled manner to observe the messages reported by the compiler. This will assist you in “debugging” your programs when you encounter these error messages in the future.
- Remove the ‘#’ character from the beginning of line 10. The line number is displayed bottom of the Visual Studio window (e.g. “Ln 10 Col 1”). That is, change line 10 from
#include to include
Now rebuild the program. This “typo” will generate quite a few errors? Record the first error message you see in the dialog box at the bottom of the VS IDE. Then restore line 10 to its original value before proceeding.
- Now comment out line 10 and recompile. That is, change line 10 so that it now appears
//#include
Notice that this generates a ton of errors. Look for a line that begins “1>m:\projects\lab1\lab1\dec2bin.cpp(21)”. This error corresponds to line 21. Record the error message for line 21 below.
Since iostream is the library which defines cout, cin, and endl, commenting-out the header file hides the definition of these from the compiler. Be sure to restore line 10 to its original state before proceeding.
