Coder's Guild Mailing List

Talking to Dos

Posted by Josh Letterman on 1999-03-06

Ok. I have been a lurker on this list for a long time now. I have found
posts to be extremely informative.

However, now I am in dire straits. An emergency has been plopped onto my
lap, and I have no idea how to solve the problem. It is basically this:

A program has been created using (I believe Shockwave) to create a
presentation. This program has a "calculator" that calculates insurance
premiums based on input information. Only here's the catch. The "calculator"
is not actually part of the original program. It is a standalone Dos program
with which this 32-bit program is trying to interact.

In a nutshell, the presentation program (program A) is supposed to retrieve
information from the user in a nice graphical way (Windoze) and then run the
Dos program (program B), feed B the information input by the user, and
return information back to A to be displayed in this nice graphical way.

I have reviewed A, and the graphical presentation doesn't seem to be that
difficult to implement in VB5, but I have no idea how to communicate with a
dos program. I *have* been able to get it to run using:

dim retval
retval = shell("myprogram",1)

However, I can't seem to use the SendKeys function with this dos program. I
need help!!!!!

Anyone?