Learn to Program with Small Basic

Throughout this book we’ll include parentheses with the names of the
methods, like WriteLine(), so you can easily tell that they’re methods.
Naming Your Programs
Project names can make it easy for you to identify what your project is
about; these names don’t really matter much to Small Basic. Although we
asked you to save this program as Greetings.sb because it was what the program
was about, you could save it as SecretGarden.sb, FuzzyKittens.sb, or even
HungerBoardGames.sb, if you really wanted to. Just don’t change the .sb part
of the filename, which is called the extension. Small Basic programs use that
extension by default, and there’s no reason to change it!
Files Generated by Small Basic
When you click the Run button, Small Basic creates other files in order to
run your program. Open the folder where you saved your Greetings.sb program.
Table 1-1 lists the files you should find in that folder if you clicked
Run earlier.
Table 1-1: Files Generated by the Small Basic Compiler
File
Description
Greetings.sb This is your source code file, which contains everything you
entered into the IDE. If you want to edit your code and make
it better, you edit this file.
Greetings.exe This is the executable file created by Small Basic. This file is
what your computer actually runs. Double-click this file, and
your program will run.
SmallBasicLibrary.dll You can ignore this file for now. The dynamic link library (.dll )
file contains executable code that supplements your Greetings​
.exe file. The Greetings.exe file won’t run without this file!
Greetings.pdb You can ignore this file for now, too. This program database
(.pdb) file contains information that is used by advanced tools
to debug, or fix any errors, in the program.
Now that you’ve compiled your source code, you can also run your
Greetings.sb program without using the IDE. You do this by double-clicking
the Greetings.exe file.
NOTE
When you click Run after editing your source file, Small Basic overwrites the .exe,
.dll, and .pdb files. If you want to keep these files, you need to manually copy them
to a different location before you click Run. Also, don’t forget to click Save to save the
changes to your .sb file.
8 Chapter 1