9.14 Further Study
Given that writing scripts for the Windows Script Host is a
language-dependent endeavor, the most helpful reference material will be
specific to the particular language you're using. Microsoft's support web site
for all their scripting technologies, including WSH, can be found at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/. In addition to documentation on
VBScript and JScript, you can download updates to the WSH engine. Note that if
you distribute scripts to other machines, you'll need to be careful about
supporting features found only in newer releases of WSH.
Before committing to VBScript for a project, you may want to
do some research on other supported languages listed here. Due to VBScript's
heritage in web pages, security concerns have resulted in some limitations in
the VBScript language, such as its inability to access the clipboard or link to
external .dll files.
Given that JavaScript (which actually has nothing whatsoever
to do with Sun Microsystems' Java
programming language) was created by Netscape, you can find a lot of developer
information at:
http://developer.netscape.com/tech/javascript/. Keep in mind, however, that
JScript is Microsoft's bastardized version of JavaScript and therefore not
exactly the same language.
The Practical Extract and Report Language (Perl) is probably
the most powerful and flexible scripting language available for the Windows
Script Host at the time of this writing. It's traditionally very popular among
the Unix crowd and has gained tremendous popularity for its use in writing CGI
programs for web servers.
Unfortunately, Windows XP doesn't come with the Perl engine;
you'll have to obtain a separate Perl add-on module from
http://www.activestate.com. More information is available at
http://www.perl.com.
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