A program that creates another program

Question

I need to create a program that creates another program but not a compiler though.

For example,

I write a program that accepts a string input from the user. Let's say user enter "Pluto". This program should then create a separate .exe that says "Hello Pluto" when executed.

How can I do this? If you could give example in C# and Windows Forms, it's better.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Basically that is a compiler - just for a particularly simple language.

If you can express the final program in C#, the easiest solution is probably to use CSharpCodeProvider. That's what I do for Snippy, a little tool to help run code snippets easily for C# in Depth. The source code to Snippy is on the C# in Depth web site and can give you an idea of what you might do - basically you'd just want it to write the executable to a file instead of building it in memory.

Alternatively, look at the MSDN docs which have an example generating an executable.

Answer 2

The classes you are looking for are in the Microsoft.CSharp namespace

CSharpCodeProvider codeProvider = new CSharpCodeProvider();
ICodeCompiler icc = codeProvider.CreateCompiler();
System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerParameters parameters = new CompilerParameters();
parameters.GenerateExecutable = true;
parameters.OutputAssembly = Output;
CompilerResults results = icc.CompileAssemblyFromSource(parameters,SourceString);

(from microsoft support found by using google - taking less than 20 sec)