VBScript: Plain and Simple
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A direct descendant of Visual Basic, VBScript is a scripting language now in its fifth full version. Despite the announcement this year that no new functionality will be added to it, the eleven-year-old language is still useful for a variety of tasks. This article will introduce you to some of the things you can do with it.
The year was 1996 and Visual Basic sat on a couch watching an episode of The Young and the Restless, stuffing her face with bon-bons. Victor had just proposed to Cassandra, who, unbeknown to Victor, was Victor's sister's third cousin, who was suffering from a horrible case of amnesia, and was pregnant with Victor's fourth-dimensional future self from the year 9000, who it turns out, had also impregnated Victor's own mother, making Victor his own father.
They were just about to reveal all of this to Victor, who himself was suffering from a rare form of bulimia, when Visual Basic felt a slight cramping in her stomach. The baby, whom she had decided to name Visual Basic Script after its father (who shall remain nameless), wasn't due for another month.
But nature cannot be stopped, and twenty four hours later, Visual Basic Script, or VBScript as he would come to be known, was born.
VBScript began life as a limited version scripting language of Visual Basic, targeted at web developers. Within two years of its release, it went from version 1.0 to 5.0 and began to be used by system administrators the world over. In version 5.0, it gained considerable power as Regular Expressions (RegEx), Classes, the With Statement, and some other functionality was added to its repertoire. In 2007 it was noted that no new functionality would be added to the scripting language, though support will still be available as long as Microsoft owns the world.
So now that we got all the boring stuff out of the way, put away your pillow and open up that case of Jolt Cola. We're about to start the grand tour.
Before we begin discussing VBScript I have to ask you some questions though *shines a bright light in your eyes*:
Where were you on the night of October fifteenth?
Do you have a good understanding of HTML?
Do you have a passing knowledge of scripting languages?
Do you have a Notepad? (Not the kind you bring to school...the text editor on your computer)
Even if you didn't answer yes to any of those, I am going to let you read on, because let's face it 1) I need the readership and 2) I think maybe you are smart enough to proceed without all of that, though it certainly wouldn't hurt, particularly the HTML, since that is where we will be placing our VBScript.
Next: Writing Our First VBScript >>
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