What is the difference between VB and VBScript?
VB is a full-fledged programming language which can be used to create compiled applications, while VBScript is a sub-set of VB and is a scripting language that can be used to run a set of commands, similar to an old-school DOS batch file. Generally, a scripting language can not be used to create a full-fledged binary application and it can not be compiled down to a executable binary file.
This is a very old question, but existing answers are outrageously vague, and/or fail to identify the most important stuff, when they're not just plain wrong. Not going to repeat what other answers already indicate, but the following differences are missing from the other answers:
Scopes
VBScript code doesn't need procedure scopes: it can be written as a [drumroll] script that just executes a bunch of procedural operations top-to-bottom.
In VB6/VBA executable statements can only exist inside procedure scopes.
Types
In VBScript everything (variables, function return values, etc.) is a Variant (i.e. pretty much a duck, like in JavaScript). It is illegal to declare an explicit type when declaring a variable. The As keyword is illegal!
In VB6/VBA everything defaults to an implicit Variant, but good VB6/VBA code uses explicit types where applicable.
VBScript is a variety of VB, just as VB6, VBA, and VB.NET are. They're all different, some of them dramatically so.
VBScript is a "lightweight" subset of Visual Basic with limited syntax that is used for scripting purposes (like routine task automation) rather than application development.
While Visual Basic code is compiled into binary executables, VBScript code is interpreted and runs within a host environment (e.g. Windows Script Host or Internet Explorer).
Also VBScript's code can be ran in VB6. Maybe that confuses you.
But all VB6's codes can't be ran in VBScript.
VB is application development tool (like, desktops, web based application)
And VB script is scripting language, it can not independently developed application.
Related
First at all, I come from Visual FoxPro 9.0.
All my apps made on VFP can execute dynamic code from any events (Buttons, Grids, Forms, etc).
Example:
lcFile = "c:\test\myDynamicCode.txt"
=EXECSCRIPT(FILETOSTR(lcFile))
Is it possible to execute it on Pascal?
Thanks...!
The default install of Lazarus comes with a set of components under the general title "Pascal Script" which can be used to implement a scripting engine and debugger - see
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Category:Pascal_Script
and
http://wiki.freepascal.org/Pascal_Script_Examples
The scripting engine can compile (to byte code) and execute scripts written in a dialect of Object Pascal which is close to, but not identical with, the Object Pascal which Delphi implements. The package comes with code wrapper around a number of the supplied Lazarus/FPC units which implement components which are intended to be equivalent to a number of Delphi's components.
In short, you should find that you can use Pascal Script to write and dynamically execute Object Pascal code equivalent to the majority of what you could write and compile in FPC. As you will gather from the code examples in the second link, the Pascal Script engine allows you to add custom functions defined in your own Lazarus/FPC code and make your forms and classes accessible to, and scriptable by, a Pascal Script script.
If you need a scripting engine to implement another language, there are 3rd party libraries available to assist with this. Most were written for Delphi but should translate easily to FPC + Lazarus. Examples include
TP Lex/Yacc: http://www.musikwissenschaft.uni-mainz.de/~ag/tply/
Delphi Compiler Generator: http://www.soft-gems.net/index.php/tools/delphi-compiler-generator
So, in short, if what you are wanting to do can be expressed in Lazarus/FPC code, there is a very good chance it can be executed in Pascal Script code. If you need an engine for another scripting language, TP Lex/Yacc and DCG will allow you to write your own scripting language, but be aware that it will be a lot more work than using the Pascal Script components.
Btw, I don't know whether Linux is of any interest to you, but the Linux version of Lazarus/FPC also comes with the Pascal Script commponents.
Where I am at, it is not allowed to install any software. I need to automate some tasks and I cannot do it in powershell because it is not allowed. Are there any languages already installed on windows that i can use to automate and probably integrate with microsoft office?
VBScript (WSH/CSCRIPT), Batch (MS Command Shell typically referred to as DOS), through Office Applications themselves you have VBA (Visual Basic for Applications)
Yes, you can run VBScript and JScript through Windows Script Host. While using these languages, you can create objects to interact with Microsoft Office.
EDIT:
I've found the documentation for WSH fairly lacking, especially for JScript examples. Recently I wrote a script to print all files in a folder and subfolders, had to use JScript because my target machine was under similar restrictions to yours. Check out this gist for the source, it should give you a rough idea of how WSH scripts can work.
Beyond that, you can interact with Excel, for example, by calling CreateObject("Excel.Application") and using the returned object. I had to do this once, but that code belongs to a former employer and I can't remember the specifics beyond grabbing an Excel instance.
I want to use VBScript to read values directly out of memory of another running application.
I can't seem to find information on using ReadProcessMemory() in VBScript.
I intend to use this in Quick Test Pro to do screen scraping of an application that needs testing.
This application does not use any standard controls and using QTP's OCR abilities does not provide us with reliable results.
We currently have code written in AutoIT that reads values of this application directly from memory and converts it to ASCII. But we want to remove the reliance on that and using VBScript from within QTP would be ideal.
So can anyone tell me how I can read values from an executable in memory using VBScript?
You can't do this in VBScript directly. As Josh Einstein's comment above mentions, it's impossible to call native Windows API functions directly from VBScript. There are two major reasons why this is the case. First, it would pose obvious security risks for code written in such a scripting language to be able to call native code directly. And second, VBScript only has one data type (Variant), which is not going to work properly with the return values of most of the Windows API functions.
Instead, you'll have to wrap the native API functions that you need in an ActiveX DLL (COM automation object), and then call functions from that library from your VBScript. The wrapper DLL would be designed specifically for VBScript-interoperability and would take care of any necessary data-type conversions, exposing only Variant types and containing all of the necessary (or potentially necessary!) error handling routines. Using VB 6 is the quickest and easiest way to do this and doesn't even require you to learn a new language, but you can also do this from C++, if you're comfortable there.
what's a good way to scripting or creating programs unders windows?
How about python?
You will need Notepad, and to learn JScript (not Javascript... JScript), VBScript or Batch. Then you can easily create small scripts, somewhat equivalent to bash shell scripts on Linux.
For the first two, you can read the Windows Script Host documentation.
Windows Powershell is becoming the new Windows scripting language. Being a full .NET language, it is inevitably much more powerful that the horrible old batch scripts one used to have to write (and still retains much of the syntactic sugar of scripting/shell languages).
You can do VBScript without the need to install anything.
Open notepad and enter the following text:
MsgBox "Hello"
Save it as filename.vbs
Double click the file you just created, congratulations - you just created and ran a VBScript.
I'd like to plug AutoIt. It's a free download and comes with it's own editor that can be quickly/easily installed anywhere. The language is very rich and comes with a large library of user defined functions. Integrated context-sensitive help with syntax display. There's even a GUI editor. A final plus is that it compiles to .exe so will run on any win2k/xp/vista/2k3/2k8/7 PC.
I always use Python for scripting on Windows.
A vague question usually gets a vague response.
Download a compiler or interpreter and find a tutorial.
With more information we can better point you in the right direction
I would say there are three clever choices here:
Scripting: Use JSCRIPT because much of what you learn about JSCRIPT can be used in Javascript. You can either graduate to Javascript/AJAX in the browser, or Microsoft .HTA apps.
Or, you could use Python because it has standard modules to do just about anything a sysadmin would do plus addons to access Windows .COM objects and WMI. You can then either graduate to Python on a UNIX platform, Jython (which is Python in the JVM) or IronPython which opens up the entire world of .NET for you.
And there is of course, the non-scripting choice which is about creating programs under Windows. If you choose this you probably have an end-game in mind that is beyond scripting, so start with SharpDevelop and IronPython. Then, as you gain confidence, start working with C# still using the same Sharpdevelop toolset. With this choice you can also graduate to UNIX applications using the MONO .NET environment although if you want to do GUI apps on UNIX you will need to use GTK# instead of Windows Forms.
I'd like to do some light data processing - a little binary data manipulation followed by conversion to text serialization. The result is written to a file, and processed by an external program (run by my program). The data processing is more than I'd care to consider doing in batch files.
I'd prefer to use a scripting language, but not have to install the language first. The target computers are mostly older Windows boxes, which are disconnected from the network (no updates, such as PowerShell)
I'm not familiar with the various language's tools for creating EXE files. Which ones have solutions that work well and don't produce huge files? (i.e., whole interpreter package plus my script.)
For my money (its free) AutoIt 3 is exactly what your looking for. AutoIt produces relatively (250k is the standard overhead) small stand alone exes. It has a full perl like regex engine so your light data processing should be a breeze (I've written some pretty heavy data processing scripts in it myself). When downloading autoit be sure to get the full version including Scite this makes compile to exe a one click operation.
I know I might get flamed for this, but VB 6 is a viable option. Since XP SP2 (I think, possibly earlier), Windows has come with its runtimes installed. Not sure about vista.
Theres also the Windows Scripting Host that uses VBScript and JScript.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Script_Host
Lua is an excellent choice for that kind of stuff. You can integrate it in your executable or use the standalone Lua interpreter to run your scripts.
While waiting for answers I ran across Shoes, which can make Ruby .exe (I'm most familiar with Ruby) I got it mostly working, although the size of 2.4MB was a bit larger than I'd like. However, I found that it would crash when changing application focus.
I switched to a 'regular' terminal script, and found rubyscript2exe, which, after working around a problem with rubygems, seems to work, and creates a ~700kb file.
I did rather like some of the options presented, but it's not worth redeveloping at this point.
Python with py2exe. Depends on what you mean by small though.
Would using PowerShell script be something you've considered. The data processing might be richer there.
Why not knock up a .NET application? There are free editions of the IDE, and the Framework comes with Windows as a standard component (which also includes a C# compiler, as it happens.)