Notes

Last week, I gave an introduction to the Visual Basic Scripting Edition
(VBScript) language and why it is important. This week, we get into some
basic coding, starting with file input and output (i.e. reading and
writing to/from files).

As mentioned in last week's article, VBScript is a language that joins
(or glues) the different components of Microsoft's scripting
technologies together. These components are comprised of automation
objects (COM objects) that expose different parts of an application to
the developer. Automation objects are what make it possible for you to
programmatically access the file system and create, modify, delete,
open, and close files for different purposes.
To open/create a file in VBScript, you must create a handle on the
FileSystemxxx object and then use different methods to manage the file.
For example, let's say that we want to read a list of servers from a
file. To verify that we are reading the proper name from the file, let's
print the name of the file to the screen. Remember from my previous
article on Wscript vs. Cscript, if you use Wscript, then for each line
echoed to the screen, you will receive a message box that you will have
to hit "ok" in order to continue. But if you use Cscript, all of your
output will be displayed to the command prompt window without any
unnecessary prompts. So let's copy the following code to notepad and
save the file to c:scriptsreadFromFile.vbs.
inputFile = "c:scriptsservers.txt",

------------------- Begin Copy -------------------
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile("serverList.txt",1)
Do Until objTextFile.AtEndOfStream
strComputer = objTextFile.Readline
Wscript.Echo "Server name: " & strComputer
Loop
--------------------- End Copy -------------------

In addition, create another text file called c:scriptsserverList.txt
with the name of a couple of servers in it, with one server name per
line similar to the following:
serverName1
serverName2
serverName3

Then, let's open a command prompt window and change directories to
c:script. Now, type the following:
cscript readFromFile.vbs

If you did everything correctly, you should receive output that looks
similar to:
------------------- Begin Ouput -------------------

Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.

Server name: serverName1
Server name: serverName2
Server name: serverName3

--------------------- End Ouput -------------------

Basically, this code created a handle called "objFSO" (which is the name

I chose) to the object called "Scripting.FileSystemObject". This is the

object that allows you to work with the file system. Next, we created a

handle to a file that resides in the file system using the code:

"Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile("serverList.txt",1)"

This created a handle to our file called