VBScript (short for Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is a scripting language developed by Microsoft and based on Visual Basic. It is used to create scripts in the Windows family of operating systems.
Development of VBScript began in 1996 as part of the Microsoft Windows Script technology, originally intended for web developers. It was intended to replace the obsolete language interpreted by the command.com application. Over the next two years, the language evolved enough to draw the attention of system administrators who needed a more powerful automation tool than a batch language. Beginning with Windows 98, VBScript was included as standard on all instances of Windows.
Development of the language and the inclusion of new features in it continued until the advent of the framework .NET; at that point he was built into the ASP.NET, and release of new versions of the language ceased. The latest version was VBScript 5.8. The language is maintained by the Sustaining Engineering Team.
Using
VBScript is executed in a special environment which exists in several variants:
Windows Script Host allows you to create independent applications by writing .vbs scripts and running them with Cscript.exe (command-line mode) and Wscript.exe (GUI mode) commands.
In Internet Explorer, VBScript performs functions similar to JavaScript – creating executable functions embedded in HTML.
With Active Server Pages the language is used to process web pages on the server side.
VBScript can be embedded in two other types of script files: Windows Script Files (.wsf files which provide modularity and code reuse) and HTML Applications (.hta files which combine HTML capabilities to describe the program interface and VBScript to implement the logic).
Microsoft Script Control technology makes it possible to embed the VBScript runtime environment in other programs.
Language Features
VBScript syntax is a somewhat simplified version of Visual Basic syntax. In particular, it does not support typing: all variables are of Variant type, although each single value can be converted to a desired type using explicit conversion functions CStr, CDate, etc. The language defines many constants to improve readability of the code.
VBScript provides date/time, string handling, mathematical calculations, error handling, regular expressions and more. Additional functionality can be added using ActiveX technology. File system management, file modification, running text operations are available using scrrun.dll library. Access to the database is realized through ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and IIS Metabase. XML files and schemas can be managed using Microsoft XML Library Application Programming Interfaces (msxml6.dll, msxml3.dll), which can also be used for searching the Internet.