[THIN] Re: VBScripts
- From: "Braebaum, Neil" <Neil.Braebaum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 10:32:39 +0100
Comments inline...
> -----Original Message-----
> From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Martin Stephenson
> Sent: 20 April 2005 23:25
> To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [THIN] Re: VBScripts
>
> I thought someone would ask me to back up my claim.
I said that for a reason - because as somebody who's extensively used
both, there isn't much credence in it.
For system admin / AD maintenance, IME vbcscript and ADSI is a better
choice / fit. For login scripts, no question, Kixtart is head and
shoulders, *significantly* better and more suited.
> I was
> going to say that you couldnt use any WMI functions in
> Kixtart but I thought I should read the manual of the latest
> release first and sure enough, I discovered you can call WMI
> functions. Not that I have tried this in Kixtart though. I
> first used Kixtart in the mid 90's on a Lan Manager site but
> by the late 90's had discovered VBScript, which was at the
> time streets ahead of Kixtart.
Something of hyperbole, there. ADSI had support for active directory,
perhaps a little before Kixtart, but not much.
Something to bear in mind, here - Kixtart was designed for the login
environment - and as such, is significantly more suited to it, that
vbscript / WSH / ADSI / WMI is.
Think about this - say in your login script, you want to map a few
drives, copy a couple of files, and write some registry values.
Contrast the differences between doing this in Kixtart, and vbscript.
For system admin tasks it's a different matter - I wouldn't dream of
using Kixtart for that - and it's of no use to me when I want to write
an HTA.
> So after browsing the Kixtart Manual and my O'Reilly's
> VBscript manual, I have come up with a very short list of
> functions available in VBScript which are not (AFAIK)
> available in Kixtart.
>
> InputBox - displays a dialog box and requests a users input,
> not just yes or no. Quite handy really.
MESSAGEBOX? How long has that been in Kixtart!
> GetTempName - Returns a string containing a valid Windows
> temporary filename. I've used this to generate a temporary
> data folder that you know will not already exist, which is
> quite handy.
>
> IsArray - Indicates whether a variable is an Array.
>
> Mathematical Functions
> Log, Sgn, Sin, Sqr, Tan - well I have never used these myself
> and there probably not commonly used in VBScript. I suspect
> mathematicians use a language with a far greater range of
> math functions.
There are a number of things that may well be largely unique to either
of the scripting languages.
The point being, though, that you have to jump through hoops to make
vbscript / WSH / ADSI and WMI to do many of the common login script
activities.
The anomaly that I see is that many vbscript advocates, advocate it for
everything, even when it's clearly not suited or the optimal tool.
I've been writing ADSI / vbscripts for years, and have even developed
reasonable sized applications and HTAs with it. As likewise I've been
writing Kixtart scripts for years, too.
The facts remain, vbscript is a poor cousin when it comes to login
scripts - it's overly complex, unwieldly, and requires almost
inappropriate interfaces to do anything half-decent. This is where
Kixtart excels.
Sure, you can jump through hoops to write overly complex login scripts
using vbscript, and use WMI so that you can write binary values of
decent length - but it's a damn sight easier in Kix.
As likewise, you could use Kixtart to write complex sys admin scripts,
but it's not the best / most optimal tool for it - vbscript is much
better for that, or stuff that you may incorporate into a web page (well
actually javascript is much better for that).
> There are other advantages to VBScript for instance the code
> is easily ported to and from Visual Basic (not sure about
> VB.net though) and there is a huge number of VB programmers
> and free source code to tap into.
>
> As I dont want to start a religious war here, if either
> product works for you, then by all means stick with it.
My only reason for pointing out the fallacies in this, is trying to make
the wrong tool more suitable for certain tasks.
By any stretch of the imagination, vbscript is unwieldly for login
scripts, and Kixtart is unwiedly for admin scripts.
Yet it always seems to be the vbscript exponents who'll try and make it
fit to every scenario, even if it's the wrong tool of choice for the
requirement.
Neil
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