Where are my programs?

[leezinho]

I've written a few dozen programs in VB (Ver. 5.0). I presume they reside somewhere on the hard disk in my PC, but where are they? When I'm in the VB programming environment, I can access them to edit ("File" > "Open Project") and run. There, they have names like "breaker.vbp", "calcu.vbp", and "check.vbp". These look like file names to me, but when I ask Windows to find them ("Start" > "Start Search"), I always get "No items match your search". I want to "grab" them to migrate them to a new computer, but I can't find where they are located.

[Arjay]

Where does File\Open Project point to? Wouldn't the files you are looking for be in the same place?

[leezinho]

Thank you, Arjay, that's a partial solution. I found three of my 48 programs there. The other 45 are still in limbo.
Even those are not found by Windows's "Start Search", so part of the problem seems to be "Start Search".

[2kaud]

From a command prompt try

cd \
dir *.vbp /s/a/o/p

This should display the names and locations of all the files that end .vbp on your computer.

[Arjay]

Do you need to look for .exe files rather than *.vbp files? I forgot whether vb5 can produce a standalone exe.

[leezinho]

Thanks for your follow-up, Arjay.
VB5 does produce an exe file if you request it, and I haven't had trouble finding those.
(In fact, if I remember correctly, it has the courtesy to ask you where you'd like the exe to be stored.)
Some of my programs, in addition to the *.vbp file, have a same-named *.vbw file, and others, in addition to these two, have a *.frm and a *.frx file.
I presume I need all four files in order to continue editing the program after migrating to the new computer—am I right?

[Arjay]

Thanks for your follow-up, Arjay.
VB5 does produce an exe file if you request it, and I haven't had trouble finding those.
(In fact, if I remember correctly, it has the courtesy to ask you where you'd like the exe to be stored.)
Some of my programs, in addition to the *.vbp file, have a same-named *.vbw file, and others, in addition to these two, have a *.frm and a *.frx file.
I presume I need all four files in order to continue editing the program after migrating to the new computer—am I right?

I'm not a VB expert, but you'll need all the related source files (.vbp, .vbw, .vb, etc.).

[DataMiser]

Thanks for your follow-up, Arjay.
VB5 does produce an exe file if you request it, and I haven't had trouble finding those.
(In fact, if I remember correctly, it has the courtesy to ask you where you'd like the exe to be stored.)
Some of my programs, in addition to the *.vbp file, have a same-named *.vbw file, and others, in addition to these two, have a *.frm and a *.frx file.
I presume I need all four files in order to continue editing the program after migrating to the new computer—am I right?

Yes you need all files used by the project You will always have a vbp, vbw and frm you will likely have a frx and you may have others such as .bas .cls .ctl .res
If you open the vbp file in notepad many [possibly all] of the files used will be listed there. You definitely need any thing that is listed there which may also include dll and ocx files that are located in the Windows/System ... folders in addition you may have mdb files txt files ico, jpg, bmp and possibly any number of others all depending on what your project does and how it was created.

Also note that any files which are not in the same folder as the vbp will have a path shown in the vbp as well the path may be relative or literal depending on the location of the file in question.

by default Vb5 saves projects in the folder where the VB.Exe file is located. You can of course save them anywhere but on any OS after XP the default location is problematic and should not be used.

[leezinho]

Belated thanks to 2kaud (#4) for the advice to use Command Prompt for finding files.
It detects folders that are invisible to any other finder:
Windows Explorer, Notepad, and Open Office (where to save?) are all unable to "see" those folders.
And yet those invisible folders contain files whose names only I could have written.
I assume Visual Basic saved them there without asking my permission. Well, they certainly are safe from any meddling.
So far, I haven't been able to access them for editing.
It seems my only recourse is to ask Command Prompt to "type" them on the screen, and then Print Screen and maybe have to re-key them.
But anyhow, 2kaud, I'm grateful for your suggestion of Command Prompt.
I'm old enough to remember DOS, so relearning it is easier than having to face it as something new.

[2kaud]

I'm old enough to remember DOS, so relearning it is easier than having to face it as something new

Yep!

If you can 'type' them and they have the content you want, then you can re-direct the output to a file in another folder using >. You should also be able to use the copy command to copy them to another folder.

The issue is why you can't see them. If you open Folder Options in the Control Panel then View and set Show hidden files, folders and drives you should be able to see them in Explorer.

[leezinho]

Folder Options. Aha! Thanks!

[leezinho]

After nearly 20 years of programming with VB (5.0), I've discovered (this week) that I could have controlled where the resulting files were located.
Finding where they are now, I conclude that I sometimes accidentally accepted file names provided by the IDE, including "3", "+", and "ð" (a phonetic symbol that is not on the keyboard!). Thank you all for your patience with my ignorant questions.