Starting the Borland C++ 4.5 IDE

To start the Borland C++ IDE (Integrated Developement Environment), double-click on the Borland C++ icon in the CS Apps program group:

Double-click on this icon in the CS Apps program group!!

After a few moments, the following window will appear:

This is the starting window of the Borland IDE. In this integrated environment, you will be able to write, compile, debug, and run programs. If you have run Borland before, you may or may not see the u:\noname00.cpp window. There are three main areas of interest in the Borland IDE, the menu bar at the top of the window; the speed bar, which is just below the menu bar; and the status bar at the bottom of the window. The menu bar allows you to perform all the actions necessary for creating and running programs. The most important menus are the File menu, which allows you to Open, Close, and Save programs; and the Debug menu, from which you can run a program you have written. The Edit and Search give usefull commands for editing programs, such as: copying, deleting, searching, and replacing test. The bottom half of the Window menu allows switch to any window you have open, which can be useful if you have many windows open and the screen is cluttered so it is hard to find what you want. All of these options will make more sense to you once you have starting writing programs and working with the Borland IDE. You are encouraged to look through the menus and try out the different features you find there. Next, we briefly discuss the speed bar and status bar, after which we will walking you through writing and running a program.

The speed bar is the row of buttons found just below the menu bar:

The speed bar allows quick access (just click on a button!) to commonly used operations such a opening/closing files and running programs. Every button on the speed bar corresponds to one of the commands in the menus; the purpose of the speed bar is to allow you to access common commands quickly -- with just the press of the button. (On the other hand, not all menu commands have a corresponding speed bar button, so it is sometimes necessary to use the menus.) Besides the Open and Save buttons, Run (the lightning bolt) probably gets the most use. The Rebuild All button can sometimes fix "linker" errors that you get when you try to run your program. This is especially the case if you have worked on your program in another lab, such as at DoIT, and then brought the program back to the 302 lab. Since computers can crash or have errors that force a reboot, it is wise to save your work frequently. Make a habit of clicking on that little Save button now and again.

The Status Bar is found at the bottom of the IDE window. When you move the mouse over any button or hold down the button on any menu item, the status bar will display a brief description of that item's function. Below, we have pointed the mouse at the Run button on the speedbar, and the status bar at the bottom is describing to us the function of that button:

When you are editing a program, the status bar has several other useful displays, as shown below:

Starting from the left, it tells us: the line and column location of the cursor, whether we are in Insert or Overwrite mode, and whether the file has been modified since it was last saved. As mentioned above, it is a good habit to save your files frequently. Most of the time, you will want to do your editing in Insert mode; this is the familiar mode from most word processors. If you want, you can toggle between Insert and Overwrite mode using the "insert" key, located on your keyboard in the group above the arrow keys.