Idea for a program...Can VB do it?

[kishkizzle]

Hey all, first post

This isn't for a school project of any kind, it's for personal use and MAYBE eventually being distributed as freeware if I got good enough results out of it. I've just finished an introductory course in VB 2005 at St Clair College (Windsor ON) but we didn't learn anything along these lines, it's all basic stuff like calculations between GUI elements.

The software I have access to: Visual Studio 2005 Professional. The only language I know at all though is VB.

My idea is this:

-program asks for a file name
-program looks for this file name, notes all occurrences
-deletes file name if it is found in improper locations (for example some viruses will put a legitimately named file in System32 when the original, safe file may be in Windows, etc)
-saves text file log of actions taken

Eventual plans for expansion if I could make that work would be:
-automatically checking against a text file list of filenames
-removes registry connections to removed files

This would basically be a really low level of antivirus program. Any purposes behind it are nonprofit but if you help extensively you'd get credit for it if I ever distributed it.

Questions:
-can VB do operations on files and paths like I have described?
-if so would it generate any sort of UAC alerts in Vista? I'm sure on XP this is no issue and my dev environment is XP
-are there any legal concerns developing this program (due to invasive nature)?

If those are not issues, what are some areas I should start reading up on? Specific tutorial links / web resource links would be appreciated. When I search for anything online I always get VB6 stuff which is incompatible, and I don't know how to up-convert the code.

Thanks

[Stove]

Quote:

Can VB do operations on files and paths like I have described?

Check the System.IO namespace, it has everything you need to work with files and directories. In your case, DirectoryInfo's GetDirectories() and GetFiles() methods. Aswell, the StreamReader class is usefully for reading simple text files.

Quote:

If so would it generate any sort of UAC alerts in Vista?

Probably, though I've never used Vista. I can't see it being a problem if the program is run with administrative rights.

Quote:

Are there any legal concerns developing this program (due to invasive nature)?

Maybe add a "use at own risk" license type thing? I doubt that's really a major legal concern though.

Oh and check out MSDN, it has everything you'll ever need to know about developing windows apps and the .Net framework.