JERRY LEE FORD, JR.
Microsoft
®
WSH
and VBScript
Programming
for the Absolute
Beginner
Second Edition
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To Alexander, William, Molly, and Mary.
T
he second edition of
Microsoft WSH and VBScript Programming for the
Absolute Beginner

Microsoft Windows XP Profes-
sional Administrator’s Guide
. He has over five years’ experience as an adjunct
instructor teaching networking courses in Information Technology. Jerry lives in
Richmond, Virginia, with his wife, Mary, and their children William, Alexander,
and Molly.
About the Author
This page intentionally left blank
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
PART I Introducing the WSH and VBScript . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Chapter 1 Getting Started with the WSH and VBScript . . . . .3
Project Preview: The Knock Knock Game. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
What Is the WSH? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
WSH Scripting Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Selecting a WSH Script Execution Host . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Introducing the WSH Core Object Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
How Does the WSH Compare to Windows Shell Scripting? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Understanding How the Windows Shell Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
How Does It All Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Operating System Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
How Do You Install It? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
How Does It Work with VBScript? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
What Other Scripting Languages Does the WSH Support? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Introducing VBScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
VBScript Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
VBScript’s Roots. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
VBScript’s Cousins: Visual Basic and VBA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Microsoft Scripting Technologies Web Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Back to the Knock Knock Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Designing the Game. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Demo: The Square Root Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Demo: A New and Improved Square Root Calculator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Displaying Script Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
The WScript’s Echo() Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
The WshShell Object’s Popup() Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
The VBScript InputBox() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
The VBScript MsgBox() Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Back to the Math Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
A Quick Overview of the WshShell SendKeys() Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Designing the Game. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
The Final Result. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
viii
Microsoft WSH and VBScript Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition
Chapter 4 Constants,Variables, and Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . .101
Project Preview: The Story of Captain Adventure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Understanding How Scripts View Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Working with Data That Never Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Assigning Data to Constants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
VBScript Run-Time Constants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Storing Data That Changes During Script Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
VBScript Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Defining Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Variable Naming Rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Variable Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Modifying Variable Values with Expressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Using the WSH to Work with Environment Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Working with Collections of Related Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Single-Dimension Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Multiple-Dimension Arrays. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126