Windows Scripting Host

Using the Windows Scripting Host (WSH) is much easier than you think! Julian Moss explains how, in this practical guide from PC Support Advisor.

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One of Windows’s most notable deficiencies when compared with other operating systems is its lack of a batch language for automating tasks. Although the underlying MS- DOS supports batch files, they are of little use in the Windows environment: you can’t even launch Windows programs from batch files.

Support staff wishing to automate tasks for their users have been forced to use third- party tools like Wilson WinBatch or JP Software’s Take Command. Because these tools are not part of Windows, they must be separately installed before they can be used. Licensing of these tools means that additional costs are often incurred, which, if the budget is not available, becomes a problem.

This limitation of Windows was removed with the advent of the Windows Scripting Host (WSH). Available since the release of Internet Explorer 3. 0, Microsoft originally kept quiet about the facility. This is no longer the case, and the WSH is one of the standard accessories in Windows 98. It can be also be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/scripting to install on Windows 95 and NT 4.

Documentation for the Microsoft script engines can be viewed online at http://www.microsoft.com-/ scripting/ start.HTM

Scripting Architecture

Internet Explorer 3.0 introduced the capability of client- side scripting, using script code embedded in HTML pages. Instead of making this a dedicated feature of Internet Explorer, Microsoft designed the facility in such a way that scripting could be incorporated into other applications as well. The application - in this case Internet Explorer - is the scripting host, and exposes various COM objects that a script can manipulate.

In the WSH, the objects that are provided allows scripts to control certain features of the operating system. Microsoft produces one other scripting host: Internet Information Server (IIS), which uses the same script language for serverside scripting. Other developers may also write applications that are scripting hosts since Microsoft has published the specification for doing so.

Microsoft has also documented the interface for script engines. This will allow developers to write engines for other script languages. Once the engines are registered with the system these script languages can be used in any scripting host. Microsoft has produced two script languages, VBScript and JavaScript. Engines for other popular script languages like Perl and Rexx will doubtless soon appear. In this article we will focus on using VBScript, but all of the examples given here could be implemented equally well using JavaScript.