Windows Script Host

Having established a name with his superb Windows NT Shell Scripting, Tim Hill has written a fine book about the Windows technology that's replacing DOS-like batch files. Windows Script Host explains the latest Windows scripting technology, focusing on VBScript as a tool for developing robust scripting solutions under Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000.

More than his earlier work (which was largely a collection of ready-to-run administration scripts tailored for particular tasks), this book is a tutorial. It's meant to get you up to speed on several technologies, including the ActiveX-based Windows scripting architecture, the Windows Script Host (WSH) itself, the WSH interpreters (cscript.exe and wscript.exe), the VBScript language, and the WSH object model.

Those readers who are looking for ready solutions to their administration woes will find some manna here. Hill has written and published several useful scripts, including one that generates a list of a machine's users, one that configures a user's environment variables at login, and one that generates a directory listing in XML form. (There's no companion disk, though.)

Programmers who want a solid explanation of the WSH's programming environment (hardly documented until now) will be most pleased. Documentation of the WSH object model, especially the portion that exposes the file system, is excellent (though you may wish for different formatting). There are also a couple of utility files included--they'll make it easier for you to build your own administration scripts. --David Wall

Topics covered: The Windows Script Host (WSH), VBScript programming, the VBScript object model, the WSH object model (with emphasis on files, folders, and other aspects of the Windows file system), using the author's WSH library files, and performing system administration tasks with ready-to-run scripts.