VBScripting Solutions: Take Advantage of Named Arguments

Remember when you first learned how to write scripts? I remember thinking that, all in all, scripting wasn't so hard to master. A few dozen scripts later, I began to reckon that scripting was a bit boring. After I passed the threshold of writing more than a hundred scripts, I faced just one certainty: There has to be a better way to create scripts.

Windows Script Host (WSH) 5.6 can help you find a better way through its expanded support of arguments. WSH has always supported arguments. However, WSH 5.6 has taken this support to the next level.

Let's look at how WSH 5.6 supports arguments compared with earlier versions. All the code that I use requires WSH 5.6. If you're running any other version, go to http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/default.asp and navigate to Web Development, Windows Script, Windows Script 5.6. WSH 5.6 is 100 percent backward-compatible, so upgrading is painless.

Arguments in Previous WSH Versions
WSH 5.5 and earlier support arguments only through the WshArguments collection. This collection object holds all the command-line arguments that a script receives from its caller (i.e., the person launching the script). When you launch a WSH script by double-clicking the filename, you're running it without arguments. When you launch a script from the Run dialog box, you can pass arguments to WshArguments. For example, the command

MyScript.vbs A B C

passes three arguments (i.e., A, B, and C) to WshArguments. . . .