Windows Scripting Samples

Links to sections on this page:

File Utilities

Number File  In order to get my photos to sort right for slide shows, I add numbers (and a dash) to the beginning of the file names. That's a hassle to do manually, so this script was created. Just drop your files one-at-a-time on this script and it will stick progressively higher numbers on the beginning of the file names. The numbers go up 10 at a time to allow you to make a few last-minute changes without having to renumber the whole collection.

Date Name   Do you have a process that kicks out an identically-named file every day? If you want to rename them so they don't overwrite each other, naming them with date seems the most natural solution. You pass it a file name like this:
start /w DateName.vbs C:\PROGRA~1\FNORDW~1\LOGS\REFERE~1.TXT
or a quoted long name like this:
start /w DateName.vbs "C:\Program Files\Fnord Web Server\logs\Reference Log.txt"
And it would rename the corresponding
"C:\Program Files\Fnord Web Server\logs\Reference Log.txt"
to
"C:\Program Files\Fnord Web Server\logs\1999-12-28-Reference Log.txt"
I used year-month-date to make sorting easier.

Time Date Name  Same as the above DateName, but this one adds time as well. Prefaces the file name with year-month-date-hour-minute-second

DirList  Written by Fred Coleman. Fred actually got this one written up in the German PC Magazine! This willl create an "index.htm" file for any given directory. Two weeks after I decided nobody would ever need to index a directory, I found myself needing to do it dozens of times. So I got Fred's code posted so YOU won't have to build your solution from scratch!

Index  Similar in concept to Fred's script above, except I wanted mine to display icons. Amazingly, I found a way to do it. Brute force and obscure graphics formats to the rescue! For a real-life sample, most of the links on this page take you to (very simple) index pages made by this script.

Sync Dirs  If you have two different folder "trees" you need to synchronize (or update), this might help. In my case, I had a "tree" that was a single folder full of utility programs. I had another tree that had those same utilities arranged in folders sorted by category. Trouble is, when I update them, I always put the updates in the flat single-folder tree.  The category tree never got updated. That's where this script comes in! It looks at every file in every folder in the destination tree (my utilities organized by category), then searches for the matching file in the source tree (my single folder of unsorted files). If it finds a match, it checks file modification dates. If a newer version is available in the source tree, it copies it to the destination tree. Note that the source and destination trees do NOT have to have the same structure. An effect of unstructured tolerance is that only existing files in the destination are processed. If the source tree has extra files in it, they won't be copied over to the destination tree because the script has no idea where they would go in the destination tree! 

Folder File Properties  Uses the Shell.Application/Namespace/GetDetailsOf function to retrieve all the file details you'd normally get by right-clicking a file. In addition to the normal file attributes exposed by the Scripting.FileSystemObject, using Shell.Application also gets you data like the file version, description, manufacturer, owner, title, audio format, and sender name. Obviously not all properties apply to all files. This script generates a CSV report showing all the details for every file in a folder. Just drop a folder on the script.  Or just steal this code as a reference when you need to do something like show all files owned by "Administrator".

Spaces To Tabs  I used to write all my scripts with spaces for indenting because it looked better under Notepad. Unfortunately, it also made it harder to edit under Notepad! So I changed all my scripts to use tabs instead of spaces. And I used this script to do it. Put it in the starting folder and run it. It will verify what file extensions you want to modify, and convert all instances of four spaces to a single tab character. Simple, actually.

Hosts Sort  If you're the sort of person who uses (or misuses) the HOSTS file, you may have been frustrated by how difficult it is to update, sort, and organize a large HOSTS file. This is a set of scripts that make it possible to do those things with almost no effort. The scripts aren't fast, but I'm rarely in a hurry.

Functions  This will search all your source code and document the functions and subroutines it finds. As written, it searches VBS and ASP files, but this is easily modified via a constant. It searches for lines beginning with "Function " or "Sub ", and again, this is easily modified via a constant. The script starts running in the directory where it is located and produces a tab-delimited report named after the script file (like "Functions.txt").

Trim Log Files   I have lots of log files that do nothing but grow. So I wrote this to trim them down to a reasonable size. I run it as a scheduled task every night. The log files must have entries on separate lines. This script keeps the most recent entries at the end of the log and throws away old entries at the beginning of the log. Pass it a file name and a desired max size (between a hundred bytes and a million bytes). Use it like this:
start /w TrimLogFiles.vbs "c:\logs\server.log" 32767

Delete Old Files   Let it loose on the network "share" drive every once in a while. It deletes files in and below any directory you select based on age. Designated file extensions can be protected from deletion.

No Old Files  Similar to the above script based on common requests from system administrators. It can take both arguments from the environment, the command line, or interactively from the user. It deletes designated file extensions. By popular request, the script now deletes empty subdirectories. However, because this is a top-down, list-driven script, it only deletes the lowest-level empty directory in each branch of the directory tree on each run. If you run it on a regular schedule, it will eventually get around to deleting all empty unused subdirectories. Use it like this:
start /w NoOldFiles.vbs "S:\Share" 90

No Old Folders  This one only deletes old folders (as defined by the folder's "last modified" date). Of course, if it deletes an old folder, it will delete all other files and subfolders under it regardless of the age of those files or subfolders! This script only takes arguments from the command line. Give it a starting folder (which will not be deleted!) and the maximum age of a folder (in days) you wish to keep. This script is recursive, not list-driven... which doesn't actually matter in this particular case.

No Small Files  If it's little, who is going to notice it's missing? Or even better, if it's little, it must have been a bad download, so it it should be deleted.

No Brackets  If you've ever dragged files out of your IE temporary internet files folder (the easiest way to investigate linked style sheets and scripts or get copies of multimedia files you've played), maybe you've noticed how everything gets renamed with bracketed numbers! A perfectly reasonable "styles.css" gets changed to "styles[1].css". No problem if it's only a couple of files, but a pain if  you're grabbing hundreds of  files! This script will rename all the files in a single directory to return the names to normal.

Recursive Lower Case   Starts at a directory you specify and changes all file names in and below that directory to lower case. I needed this when I moved a web site onto a case-sensitive Unix web server.

Recursive No Spaces   Starts at a directory you specify and removes the spaces from all file names in and below that directory. I needed this when I moved a web site onto a Unix web server.

CRLF to CR  Converts DOS/Windows text (with CRLF line terminators) to Apple-type CR line terminators. Mostly useful as a pre-processor for other conversion programs which interpret both CR and LF as newline characters. I use it before I convert text into Palm PDB/DOC format.

LF to CRLF  Converts UNIX text (with LF line terminators) to DOS/Windows CRLF terminators. Great to fix text that got munged up during download from a *nix server to a Windows machine.

Search And Replace  Searches through any single plain-text file and replaces text you specify. Use it like this:
start /w SearchAndReplace.vbs "C:\MyFile.txt" "old text" "new text"
If you don't want to use a script to do your searching and replacing, try these: HisGrepShip  GNU Utilities  Simtel Text Utilities  Sbs2.com

Global Search And Replace   Starts at a directory you specify and edits all files (you specify the target file extensions)  in and below that directory to replace text. I use it to fix web pages, scripts, and batch files when servers, files, or directory names get changed! As written, it crashes if it finds a file with no extension. An easy fix, but like I said, I wrote this to solve my problem. And I use extensions. So there.

Code Block Search And Replace  Just like the above Global Search script, but this one lets you replace entire multi-line blocks of code. I needed this when I needed to replace a common piece of JavaScript scattered throughout all my web pages with an improved piece of code.

Update  This is for those of us who have grown a bit too big to hand-update each web page, but are too cheap or too particular to surrender to using a real site editor. The "big boys" use special comment tags to identify html code sections, so that's what this script does. If you can invest the time to put tags in your page (like put <!--LOGO_START--> and <!--LOGO_END--> around your html logo graphic code), this script will run through all your web pages and update all the code between the targeted tags.

Sub Copy  Copies a single file into multiple subdirectories. I have several "user" subdirectories, and I need to distribute files to all of them. I put this script in the parent directory of the users' directories, then drop the file I want copied onto the script. I could have used the NT FOR command to do it, but scripting lets me extend the code to handle user interaction and logging.

Change File Name Case  Changes all files in a single directory you select to upper or lower case. I needed to change case when I needed a way to "mark" files. You know, kind of like a file attribute? I have files that are "guesses" and files that are "verified" and I didn't want to create a database to keep track of which category each file was in. My Win32 box doesn't care about file name case, but code can tell if a file has an upper or lower case file name! It's just like having another file attribute! Keep it in mind...

Zero Files  Sets all files in and under a given subdirectory to zero bytes. Why? Because sometimes you want files to exist (but not take up any room) just to stop automated copy or download operations from retrieving new copies.

Zero Mirror  Creates a mirror of an existing subdirectory somewhere else -- except all the copies of the files are zero bytes. This would allow you to recreate an entire CD's file system layout on a floppy disk. Maybe that floppy would satisfy an upgrade program's requirement to see the original disk? Or use the script to make a copy of a file system in a way that would allow the Windows file search function to be used. Like create an index of all your (non-music) CDs.

Sanitize  Helps to prevent recovery of files you've previously deleted. This script runs through all your fixed hard drives and fills all the empty space with spaces. Once it runs out of room on the hard drive, it deletes all the files it created. To move as fast as possible, it starts out by creating 32MB files until it runs out of room. Then it cuts back to 16MB, 8MB, and so on, all the way down to 512 bytes to make sure all empty space is filled. The use of file copying instead of file creation and a one second delay when switching file sizes seems to handle the disk caching problem pretty well. Not meant to protect you against the NSA, just against someone in your IT department with a recovery utility or sector editor.

Debug   Written to give the same output as the DOS "DEBUG" program. I used this to look into how scripting reads binary files as text streams. By keeping the same format, I was able to make easy side-by-side comparisons. Answer -- Scripting does just fine until it hits a short run of binary zeroes. Then it's lost. Now that I know, this script really has no use! Except... Maybe in a locked-down computer, the DEBUG program is prohibited. If so, you can use this script to see what type of line-termination characters are used in a a file you're having trouble with or if that file contains real spaces or those pesky non-breaking spaces.

Size   Solves a common batch file problem: How to compare file sizes. From a batch file, use it like this: start /w size.vbs "C:\SomeFile.txt" ">" "1000"
if errorlevel 2 goto ERROR
if errorlevel 1 goto FALSE
goto TRUE
It will return an errorlevel of zero if the statement is true, an errorlevel of one if it is false, and an errorlevel of two if there is an error. Operators >, <, =, >=, and <= are all valid and must be quoted. File names only need to be quoted if they have embedded spaces or other delimiters. The size value never needs to be quoted (but it can be if you want to). Depending on your OS, you may get better results using "cscript" or nothing  in place of "start /w".

Date  Another common batch problem. How to compare file dates. Just like the above "size.vbs" except this one compares file modification dates. A newer file is "larger" than an older file. From batch, use it like this:
start /w date.vbs "C:\SomeFile.txt" ">" "C:\OtherFile.txt"
if errorlevel 2 goto ERROR
if errorlevel 1 goto FALSE
goto TRUE
The above example is asserting that the "SomeFile.txt" is newer than the "OtherFile.txt". It will return an errorlevel of zero if the statement is true, an errorlevel of one if it is false, and an errorlevel of two if there is an error. Operators >, <, =, >=, and <= are all valid and must be quoted. File names only need to be quoted if they have embedded spaces or other delimiters. Depending on your OS, you may get better results using "cscript" or nothing in place of "start /w". 

Run Other Programs

Wait For Title  Windows Scripting has an "AppActivate" function that will give focus to a window based on the window's title. It returns True or False based on whether the window existed and focus could be shifted there.  This script uses that technique to wait for any program. The downloadable zip file includes a "test.bat" to demonstrate the script.

Wait For Exe  WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation, standard on Windows 2000, XP, and newer, and a free download for Win9x) allows scripts to check the actual executable name of all running processes. So if you know the name of the program, this makes it easy to wait until all instances of that program are finished. The downloadable zip file includes a "test.bat" to demonstrate the script.

Kill Title  This script uses the Scripting "AppActivate" function to activate applications based on their title bar text, then uses the "SendKeys" method to send an application-killing "Alt-F4" keystroke.

Kill Exe  Again using WMI, this allows you to terminate all instances of running processes based on the executable name.

Schedule  This scheduling script is useful in situations where you have several programs you need to launch, but you don't want to go through the password-changing hassle of using the task manager to launch them all. Set up the Windows Task Manager to launch this script when the computer has been idle for a few minutes. That makes it a poor-mans "service" since it will run even if you log out. And you only have to update your password one time in the task manager. And, and, and... It's only a SCRIPT, which means even in most locked-down environments, this scheduler won't have to go through an approval or exception process.

WSC  You probably don't think of a WSC as a way to run other programs, but that's exactly what I do with them. You can write scripts that run programs you don't have on your computer. You can use the code in a WSC without registering it on your computer. And you can use a WSC file without giving it a WSC file extension. A bunch of little-known items I decided to mix in with my SFX script to do some interesting things. Well, interesting to me!

Pop-Up Window Killer  An extension of the above KillTitle. I tried a popular browser popup killer, and while it worked fine, I thought I could do the same thing with scripting. So I did. Sure, it doesn't have all the features, but it works, it's free, and you can modify it easily to suit your purposes. It works by maintaining a list of "bad" window titles. If focus can be shifted to one of those bad titles, then an Alt-F4 key (or Ctrl-F4 for AOL people) is sent to close the bad window. Most popups start out with an "about:blank" window title, so that gives you a great head start.

Invisible  Shows how to use the Shell "Run" method to run any program, script, or batch file invisibly. You'll want to be sure whatever you run invisibly won't require user input, because, well, you can't click a button you can't see!

PEMenu  This script is designed to be used with the BartPE PE-Builder. PE-Builder allows you to make a bootable CDROM that can run Windows programs. There is no better way to recover from a virus or from a corrupted hard drive than from a bootable CDROM. You can add your own programs to the CDROM, but most programs require a separate "plugin" to be built so they don't run directly from the CDROM. That's a lot of work... However, if you have a collection of simple utilities capable of running directly from a CDROM, this script will build all the necessary "plugin" files for you. This one script generates one plugin that will support hundreds of your utility programs. That's a lot less work!

Graphical User Interface

Progress Bar  Use Internet Explorer to create a graphical progress bar you can control from your script.

Browse for File  Automatically use the "Shell.Application" where you can, and use Internet Explorer where you can't. Either way, you can offer the user a simple graphical way to select a file. BAD NEWS: The "Shell.Application" file browsing trick used an undocumented value (8192 or 16384) to get a reference to a file. This doesn't seem to work reliably under XP.

Choose One  Use Internet Explorer to present the user with a pull-down list of choices.

Text Entry  Use Internet Explorer to allow the user to enter multiple lines of text.
 
 

Etext Utilities

Articles  This script was written to allow me to download and convert online stories, news and opinion articles. The idea is that after I use this script to get the text all in one place, I convert it and put it on my Palm so I can read it during slow times. This script just delivers plain text, so it can be used to feed Palms or PocketPCs or text readers. Great for people like me that are too cheap to pay for AvantGo. Comes complete with sample batch files that will download USA Today, PC Magazine, the San Jose Mercury News, Security Focus, Scientific American, Science News, Discovery, Asimov's, Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, the Infinity Plus web site, and more! I add another site every time I run out of reading material. BONUS: I include a sample script that merges this "articles" script with the below "makedoc" script to do the complete download, conversion to Palm format, and launch of the Palm installer.

MakeDoc  My favorite command-line Palm text conversion utility, makedoc.exe, is almost impossible to find on the web. Worse, some companies lock their computers down and won't let users install any extra programs and utilities. This simple script should fly under the radar of any lock-down policy and allow you to convert plain text into the standard Palm "doc" pdb format. The only shortcoming is that it doesn't do compression.

Unwrap   If you visit the newsgroups (like alt.binaries.e-book), you'll find several raw book scans. They look just like book pages. Absolutely not ready for conversion into anything. This script unwraps the text, removes the page headers and numbers, cleans up hyphens, corrects some common scanning errors, and generally goes a long way towards making the text usable - all with no user interaction. The script ignores any file that appears to already be unwrapped. If the script is run with cscript, it displays it's status. A DOS comand like "cscript.exe unwrap.vbs MyEbook.txt" would clean up the ebook "MyEbook.txt". If you want, you can also drag etext files and drop them on the script.

UnGutenberg  Creates a Palm PDB file from a Gutenberg etext file. All the classic stories you were supposed to have read in high school and college are available via Gutenberg. All the classic poems and fairy tales you want to read to your kids are also there. Thanks to the Palm, you can take them with you and not have to read them on a monitor or print them out (both really bad options). This script unwraps the Gutenberg etext, "sanitizes" the etext by removing all the Gutenberg "small print", and tries to set the Palm document name to match the actual book title. Accepts both raw text and zipped files as input. Needs PKUNZIP and MAKEDOC in the path.

Text to Speech

Speech Overview  Microsoft offers two ways of programming text-to-speech applications: SAPI 4 and SAPI 5. I believe SAPI 4 can be installed on everything from Windows 95 on up. Windows 2000 has SAPI 4 pre-installed (but it is virtually always broken) and XP has SAPI 5 installed. Both typically only have one voice. Install or re-install SAPI 4 from here (it's only 825KB). Even though you install SAPI4 correctly, Microsoft will fail to "register" all the DLLs correctly. You will need to run a command like this to fix things:
FOR %X IN (%WINDIR%\SPEECH\*.DLL) DO START /W %WINDIR%\SYSTEM32\REGSVR32.EXE %X
Alternatively, you can double click each DLL in the Windows / Speech folder and select the "Regsvr32.exe" file when asked what program should be used to open DLL files. You  can find several very good SAPI 4 voices at the Microsoft Agent  user download page. I like the American English and British English voices. Very good stuff. If you download the SAPI SDK 4 Suite (40MB),  and open it with WinZip, you'll find two files "mstts.exe" and "msttsv.exe" inside which will install about twenty special effects SAPI 4 voices. Robots, echoes, whispers, that sort of thing. Kids love them. Of course, you can install the entire "Suite" if you want. But unless you're a programmer, you don't want to install the entire SDK suite! As far as SAPI 5, the only two ways I know of (from Microsoft) are:
1 -- Install the entire Speech SDK 5.1 (68MB). That gets you SAPI 5 and three voices... and a bunch of samples that can't be removed. No, the voice quality is no better on SAPI 5 than on SAPI 4. The one big difference is that SAPI 5 allows you to easily convert text directly to an audio file without having to play it and record it.
2 -- Install Microsoft Reader, then install the Microsoft TTS component. The TTS installation does require Reader to be there. I haven't found a way around that. But having Reader is a lot less overhead than having an entire SDK! Unfortunately, the "Reader" route only gives you a single voice.

Speech Test  This HTA file will give you a report your computer's voice capabilities. It will provide links to allow you to fix any problems it finds.  Which means you don't have to understand how to register the speech DLL files (the green text above). You can just point and click your way through the repair.

Speak  This script will read any plain-text file out loud. It really, really tries to convince you to run it with CSCRIPT so you can see the text displayed as it's being read. You must have SAPI 4 or 5 installed. If you don't have voice capabilities, the script will prompt you to download SAPI 4. This sript is rather crude. Both the SAPI SDK downloads have equivalent utilities that do the same thing.

Story Reader  This is an HTA file that extends the above "Speak". Extends it quite well, thank you! By using an HTA, StoryReader can speak and display text without having to worry about which engine (cscript or wscript) it is running under. StoryReader also does smart unwrapping and sentence identification, allowing you to use almost any format of plain text for a story source. StoryReader accepts command line arguments allowing you to specify which file to read, a starting point in the file, and what voice to use to read the story. Because nobody likes command lines, I've also included an HTA called "VoiceChooser.hta" that lets you easily select which voice will read your stories. But wait -- there's more! StoryReader and VoiceChooser both contain the voice repair capabilities found in the above "SpeechTest". Also, I've included another file called "Menu.hta" that will automatically create clickable links for both of the other hta files and for all your stories!

Voice Test  This is the "Hello World" of  text-to-speech. It checks seven different text-to-speech objects (six SAPI 4 and one SAPI 5), and checks every voice available to each object. It tells you which objects succeed or fail, and it will identify and speak in every voice possible.

Text To Wave  This script will save any plain-text file as a WAV file. You must have SAPI 5 installed. If you don't, the script will suggest you download the SAPI 5 SDK. Create your own "books on tape" (or on CDROM). SAPI5 allows you to save to virtually any format of WAV file. I've built constants for the most common choices into the script.

Graphics

Array To Bmp  Creates a 16-color BMP (Windows Bitmap) file from an array. BMP files can be displayed as inline graphics by Internet Explorer, Mozilla, and by virtually all graphics programs.

Array To Xbm  Creates a black and white XBM (Sun Bitmap) from an array. XBM files are plain text and can be displayed by Netscape and Internet Explorer. Traditionally, XBM is used to display small icons. The XBM files this script produces require 6 bytes per pixel. The disadvantage of the large file size is balanced by the universal browser support. IE will only display XBM files locally if they are associated with mime type "image/x-xbitmap". Very few Windows graphics programs can be used to work with XBM files ("IrfanView" at www.irfanview.com is the easiest, but also try "The Gimp" at www.gimp.org and the command-line "ImageMagick" utilities from www.imagemagick.org).

Array To Pbm  Creates a PBM (portable bitmap) in version 1 format (black and white, plain text) from an array. The PBM files produced by this script require about 2 bytes per pixel. PBM files can be displayed in Mozilla and by most decent graphics programs. 

Multimedia

2Phone  If you have a movie or a folder full of movies you'd like converted so they'll play on your phone, this should help. It even works on Media Center "dvr-ms" recordings! Most phones will play MP4 files, so that's what this script produces. Subtitles and movie descriptions are embedded directly in the movie file for convenience (where they can be enabled and disabled by your player), but SMI and SRT subtitle files are preserved in case your movie player needs them. Drop a movie file or a folder full of files on the script and let it work! All the hard work is done by the "ffmpeg", "MP4Box", "atomicparseley",  and "ExtractClosedCaptions" programs, the locations of which are documented both  in the script.and the "ReadMe" file.

Slide Show  If you have a collection of sound files with matching pictures (in other words, pictures with recorded narration), this script will create the HTM web pages needed to display your files in a framed JavaScript self-advancing slide show. The narration in your sound files will play while the matching picture is on-screen. Just run the script and answer a few questions. Every question has a default answer already given, and in most cases you'll be able to simply accept the default. The script was written to work best on Windows with Internet Explorer, but it degrades gracefully (losing the auto-advance feature) on other browsers and operating systems.

Text Slide Show   If you have a collection of pictures and (optionally) related plain-text files, this script will create all the HTM web pages needed to display your files in a framed JavaScript slide show. You don't need to know how to create a web page! The script will match up your pictures and text files by name and create all the web pages for you.

Virtual Dub  Creates a jobs file for the free video editor VirtualDub. With this script, you can save your settings and have those same settings applied to every video file in a directory. I wrote this because I had lots of video captures I needed to process.

Make ASX  Run this script and point it to a bunch of movie or sound files and it will create an ASX file which will allow you to use MediaPlayer to play them sequentially. 

Jpg 2 Asx  Run this script to create an ASX slide show from a directory full of  JPG, GIF, PNG, or BMP pictures.

Repeat ASX  If you'd like to set up an infinite loop of media files (either a single sound or video file or an ASX collection) you can drop your existing media file on this script.  A new ASX file will be created which will give the appropriate repeat command to Windows Media Player.

Avi To Htm  Creates an HTM file for each video file in a folder. Should work for AVI, MPG, MOV, WMV, and more depending on client capabilities. It uses two unusual approaches. First, it uses IE's <img dynsrc= tag for the video files. This causes the videos to be displayed just like an image: raw with no player controls. Non-IE browsers fall back to using the embed tag for the Media Player plugin (again with no controls). Of course, this means I have to have some sort of browser detection script. But I didn't want to use scripting! Luckily, I remembered IE's "conditional coments" which  class IE5 and newer in one group, and all other browsers in another group. Close enough!

Wav To Htm  Creates an HTM file to match every multimedia file in a folder. Handles AVI. MPG, MP3, or any file that can be played with Microsoft's Media Player. The created HTM file has the usual OBJECT / EMBED code to insure your file plays in all browsers. This can be handy to insure multimedia files stay in the browser and don't cause a download or spawn a separate player.

Gallery Browser  Think of it as a manually advanced browser-based slideshow where you can preview thumbnails of all the images. The best part is you don't have to create the web pages or the thumbnails. Just tell the script (when it asks) where your folder of pictures is and it will create "index.htm" and "select.htm" files which will allow you to browse all the images in a framed setting. The HTM files that are created contain relative links, so they'll work whether you upload them to your web site or keep them on your hard drive.

Fli Player  This script can be used as a command line or drag'n'drop FLI animation player. Actually, all the heavy lifting is done by a Java program written by Jörg Anders from http://rnvs.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/~jan/FLI/FlicFile.html. I don't write Java, so I just compiled the source code and embedded the resulting class files in the script. The script's job is to extract the class files and create a web page on the fly. Then it launches Internet Explorer, displays the page, and cleans everything up afterwards. All you have to do is drop an FLI file on the script. Assuming you can find any FLI files.

Download Utilities

Slurp  If you find a web page (like the clipart collection at http://www.kamsart.com/clipart/free-clipart-Navy.html) that has lots of links on it -- and you want to download all the linked files, this will help. Just supply the URL of the web page, the folder on your hard drive where you'd like the files stored, and the file extension of the files you're after. The script does the rest.

Gallery Thief  This is a collection of several scripts that can grab all the images from popular image galleries. Many image galleries have so many pictures you just don't have time to locate, select, and download your favorites. It's easier to just download the lot overnight and sort them offline later. This is NOT a simple web site mirroring program. It ONLY downloads the JPG files (actually, files with mime types of "image/jpeg") and it puts them all in the same folder on your hard drive. To prevent name collisions (and help you remember where you got the pictures from), the files are typically given names that reflect their URL (but you can change the naming convention). If you have to quit, the script will pick up from where it left off when you start it up again. One big advantage of doing this with a script instead of with a "real" program is that scripts run invisibly (unless you say otherwise). You figure out how that might benefit you. On the other hand, if you make the script run in an "Open with Command Prompt" cscript DOS box, the script will give you a status display so you know how things are going.

Wget  Back in the days before broadband, if I tried downloading more than two files at a time, my download speed per file would drop so low that servers would drop me. I tried a few of the automatic download managers and didn't like the built-in ads or the instability they caused. All I wanted was a simple sequential downloader.  So I wrote a script. Here's how it works: You drag links out of your browser and drop them into a designated directory. You choose the directory (it can even be the desktop). The script will download the files associated with the links into another designated directory. Again, you choose the download directory. As the files are downloaded, the shortcuts to the links you originally dragged are deleted. If you run the script with WSCRIPT (right-click the script and select "Open"), it runs totally invisibly. If you run it with CSCRIPT (right-click and select "Open with Command Prompt", it gives you a status display of what it is doing. Your choice. If you have to turn off your computer before your downloads are finished, the next time you start the script (and point it to the appropriate folders), it will re-download any partially downloaded files and continue until all your files are downloaded.  Now... Why the name Wget? Because originally Windows didn't have a decent download object. So I had to use a separate utility named Wget. Not being particularly clever when it comes to names, I decided to name the script after the utility that did all the hard work. The script has since been rewritten to take advantage of the WinHttp object in Windows 2000 and XP. Wget is no longer needed, but I kept the original script name.

Update McAfee (Network Associates) Antivirus  THIS SCRIPT HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED TO FOLLOW CHANGES TO THE MCAFEE WEB SITE. If your antivirus is old enough that the automatic updater is trying to frighten you into buying something you don't need, disable the auto-updater and use this script! If you have Windows 2000, XP, or newer -- and if you've installed recent service packs -- then you finally got yourself a decent scriptable HTTP download control. I use that control to locate and download the latest McAfee "SuperDAT" file. Unfortunately, scripting has no fast way to save the downloaded file (a pure script solution would take hours), so I use my open-source byte array control to save the SDAT file to disk. To make things really simple, the byte array control has been embedded in the script, so there is no need to permanently install the control. Just run the script and it all happens automatically. Just schedule the script to run once a week and you're done. I know, adodb.stream could also have been used to save the binary file, but not everybody has ado installed. FYI, I also made a pure batch solution that uses FTP. If you're a network administrator, you might want want to read how to download the latest commercial update.

Update Symantec (Norton) Antivirus  THIS SCRIPT HAS NOT BEEN UPDATED TO FOLLOW CHANGES TO THE SYMANTEC WEB SITE. All it took was a few minutes and the above McAfee "SDAT" script became a Symantec "intelligent updater" daily update script! Both do the same things: Find the web page that lists the most recent update, download that update, then run the update. Just to be complete, I also created a batch and FTP solution. Unlike the above McAfee script, this Symantec script has been rewritten to not use my custom byte array control. Which came with a surprise... Because I used the Microsoft "adodb.stream" object to save the "intelligent updater" file, my antivirus program now thinks the script has the "psyme" trojan in it. Rewriting (or encoding) the script to avoid the false virus warning would just make it harder for you to read. So I'll leave it to you to encode the script or tell your antivirus to trust/exclude the script.

Get Web Page  This is actually a library of several different functions all with the same name designed to download the text from a web page. You pick which one you want and delete the rest. I have several CGI web pages on my company intranet that contain data I automatically download using these functions.

Binary Download  If you want to download something other than text over HTTP, it gets a bit more complicated. Scripting isn't really designed to handle "binary" files. But it can be done! Here I show the "correct" method for doing it and two other very unusual methods for doing it. Stay away from the unusual methods -- they are just for fun.

Encoding Utilities

SFX   Convert any file into a self-extracting VBS file. When you run the VBS file, the original file will be "extracted". That's useful enough. And pretty handy. The reason I wrote this is to allow packaging DLL helper files in with scripts that needed them. And -- this script is an example! It needs a small OCX file to read binary files. Because nobody is likely to have that file, it's been built into script. If you don't have the object already registerd on your system, this script will create, register, and unregister it on the fly. So look how I did it if you ever need to distribute a DLL or OCX file with your script!

SHAR  Similar to the above SFX scripts, but... different. More generic. More useful! And two different versions! Batch and Scripting! Like the SFX scripts, SHAR creates a self-extracting file. By choosing which version of SHAR you run, you can create a VBS self-extractor or a DOS BATCH self-extractor. Unlike the SFX script, both versions of SHAR exclusively use ADO instead of an embedded "helper" file to read binary files. That makes the SHAR scripts a lot easier to understand and maintain! Another difference is that while SFX only extracted a file to the script's directory, the SHAR VBS version allows you to browse to your desired extraction folder. The SHAR BATCH version only extracts to the "current directory", but that's the price you pay to be compatible with everything all the way back to DOS version 6. Both versions of SHAR generate archives that are optimized to stay under 80 columns wide. As a result, the text from a SHAR archive (VBS or BAT) can be copied and pasted into the body of an email, then be copied and pasted back into a VBS or BAT file (as appropriate) on the receiving end. This effectively allows file attachments where attachments aren't allowed or where separate decoders may not be available. FYI, the "shar" name of this script is taken from an old UNIX command "shar", which stands for "shell archive". In other words, an archive that can be extracted using nothing more than the "shell", or built-in operating system commands. Which is exactly what these SHAR scripts create.

SCEN  This is a VBS only (no WSC scripts!) script encoder. Take a working script of yours and drop it on SCEN. SCEN will turn it into a virtually unreadable mess that will still run. If you aren't allowed to install the genuine Microsoft script encoder -or- have to be backwards compatible with older (Win95 and original Win98) versions of scripting -or- only need casual protection from prying eyes -or- need to change your script so it doesn't contain sensitive words, then SCEN might be handy.  SCEN will create a script with lots of hex data, a bare-bones hex decoder, and the obligatory "ExecuteGlobal" command. Thanks to ExecuteGlobal, your decoded file is run directly from memory and is never written to the disk. Pretty darned simple. And your script will still work! It even works if you run it through the encoder several times.

Url Encode  Convert a recognizable URL into an ugly-looking encoded mess. A mess that still works as a valid URL! Great for when you need to give someone a URL you don't want them recognizing. Or just to mung up text. For example, it can help convert  http://google.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=ericphelps.com into http://google.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=%65%72%69%63%70%68%65%6C%70%73%2E%63%6F%6D

UrlEncode (online)  Online URL encoding because I needed it available on my phone.

Url Decode   Allows you to see what URL someone is trying to hide from you.

Rot13   Just rotates letters. A becomes N, B becomes O, and so on. Netscape mail has built-in support for viewing ROT-13 text, but darned if I could find an easy way to encode text.

Decode   Internet Explorer only. Encodes and decodes everything, and does it with a slick interface. Alex Angelopoulos (alexangelopoulos at hotmail.com) took my URL decode script above and wrapped it up in an HTA file. Then (bless him!) he sent it to me. His hta reminded me that scripting really has a lousy user interface, but HTA files allow you to create applications with the power of scripting and the user interface of web pages. The best thing about hta files is that they only run with the IE engine, so there is never a need to worry about cross-browser support. I love Netscape, but I hate the extra effort required to insure that advanced web pages work on all possible browsers. After my initial embarrassment at having ignored hta files for so long, I tried my hand at extending Alex's example. After realizing I didn't need the security priveleges hta files have, I just gave it an ordinary htm file name. If you save it to your hard drive, you can give it an hta file extension to force it to open with IE if you normally use Netscape. Not to be outdone, Alex has continued to work on and improve his original hta. He now calls it string-o-matic and he's turning it into universal web un-munging tool.

UU Decode   Just playing around. When I get the encode and decode both complete, I'll move it into the above Decode.htm file. Meanwhile, you can use this to decode UU text.

Upload Utilities

Wiki Uploader  If you have a script that creates text for a Wiki page (like to post tables on a Wiki at work), this script illustrates how to automatically upload it. Actually, this script uses http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox as the upload target, so you can play with it. It will be up to you to edit the script to point to your Wiki. NOTE: This script is intended for Intranet (company network) use only. It would be just plain stupid and very rude to use it on an Internet Wiki.

Make Ftp Script   I have too many web pages to keep up with. I may modify a dozen files in as many directories over a period of days before I upload the changes. And then -- oops. Which ones did I modify or create since my last upload? This searches for modified files (based on the archive bit), then creates an FTP upload script. It doesn't actually upload anything, it just creates a script batch file. Running the batch file will do the actual upload. It includes an undo batch file to reset the archive bits in case you change your mind. Using the archive bit is very appropriate because you don't need to back up anything that has been uploaded to the web (The web is your backup!). NT/XP/2000 users will have to modify the embedded FTP command line to point to the correct location of the FTP program.

Ftp Upload   No interaction version of the above script. This one will actually upload all modified files in and under a specified directory in one shot. Automatic undo if it can't connect to the FTP server. Log files are always kept of action and results. Can be run visibly or invisibly. So -- after you get comfortable with the above script, you switch to this one. Edit seven values (Simple things like strRemoteSite = "ftp.calweb.com") and you're home free! Use this script to make life easier for yourself. NT/XP/2000 users will have to modify the embedded FTP command line to point to the correct location of the FTP program.

Ftp File Upload   Very basic version of the above script. Again with no user interaction, but it only uploads files you designate, and it puts them where you designate. You have to build the source and destination file names into the code. This is more appropriate for giving to "content creators" that are only responsible for creating or updating a few files. To simplify things, this script does not check for or change archive bit status. This is really little more than a template that will require considerable rewriting on your part. And honestly, since you are ignoring the archive bit, you could simplify things even further by writing your own FTP batch file rather than having the script do it for you.

Web Server Upload CGI  This one is HTTP POST upload. I was frustrated over the lack of a simple file upload capability in IIS5. I tried Microsoft's NT4 upload acceptor for about ten minutes before I was overcome by the smell. I was too cheap to pay for a good commercial upload control, too lazy to invest time in the BinaryRead method, and too vain to allow someone's else's free upload control to display their logo on my web page. So I wrote my own.

Database Utilities

Access.hta   Internet Explorer only. Simple table and query viewer for Access 2000 for people who don't have Access 2000. You don't need Access or Office on your computer! Microsoft gives away the database engine, and writing a simple front-end isn't all that hard. Tables or queries with more than about a couple hundred records take way too long to display, but hey -- I said it was simple!

Odbc.hta   Internet Explorer only  Simple database and table viewer for ODBC databases. Heck, you can even turn a collection of ordinary text data files into a complete ODBC database you can query! Think of this as a poor substitute for the awesome and free WinSQL program. But if you have a locked-down machine or you need a quick, free, open-source viewer, (or you just want to steal my sample code), this might help you out. Rename this file with an HTA file extension if your default browser isn't IE or if you want to bypass the ActiveX dialog.

Mdb To Txt   Converts Microsoft Access queries or tables into plain text. Originally written so the output text could be converted into Palm DOC format or linked into another database. If you use tabs as the separator characters, the resulting tab-delimited file can be given an XLS file extension and will open fine with Excel on most systems. Which means you can also consider this to be an automatic Access to Excel converter. The script is hard-coded to use Jet for Access 97 (change the reference to "DAO.DBEngine.35" to match your DAO version). Pass it an MDB file name, query or table name, output text file name, and formatting data (comma-separated max field lengths and desired output field separators):
start /w "MdbToTxt.vbs" "Database.mdb" "QueryName" "Output.txt" "32,32,32,32" "---"

Mdb 2 Pdb   Lets you carry Microsoft Access queries or tables in your Palm OS device. Hard-coded to use Jet for Access 97 (change "DAO.DBEngine.35" to "DAO.DBEngine.36" if you have Access 2000). Pass it an output PDB file name, an output document name, MDB file name, query or table name, and (if the query requires it) a single parameter:
start /w Mdb2Pdb.vbs "PalmDbFile.pdb" "Displayed_Palm_Name" "SomeFile.mdb" "QueryName"
You need the free Palm DB program on your Palm and the conversion utility "csv2pdb.exe" on your PC in the PATH (or in the current directory).

Excel To Tab  I don't know. Once you see how to read an Excel file with scripting, you just read it. If you need tab-delimited text, you must need it for something else. Like, ummm, maybe linking the data into a database without using the slow Excel ODBC.

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous Snippets  A collection of my boilerplate VBScript functions.

HOSTS File Utilities  If you use your HOSTS file to block bad sites, you might enjoy a few scripts and batch files I wrote to help you manage your HOSTS file.

SNPP and SMS  A cute way to send a text message to a cell phone or pager from Windows 2000 or newer. It may not work on all carriers, but it works for Nextel!

Activity  If you have a forced screensaver, logout, or workstation lock policy, this simple script can stop it from happening! This script hits the "shift" key once every ten minutes. That's too easy!

Netstat  Mostly just a GUI wrapper for the command-line NETSTAT program. The value-added is that it refreshes every two seconds and only counts from when the program is started.

Windows 2000 Performance Monitor  Ibrahim Niazy shows how to use Windows Scripting to organize the reams of data the Win2K performance monitor spits out.

Register and unregister your script as a right-click option on folders.  Stephen Webster Cocks <webster@softcom.net> gives us an example of the right way to distribute scripts. Running it with no arguments automatically installs it as a right-click option on folders (with lots of nice sample registry code). If it is already installed, running it with no arguments will uninstall it. The actual point of the script is to create a shortcut to the selected folder. While you may not need that, you will want to pay attention to the concept of building install and uninstall capabilities into your scripts! Unfortunately, McAfee with heuristics enabled will falsely detect a generic unknown virus in this code. My feeling is that it's unavoidable because the script copies itself into the Windows directory and makes registry changes. Good luck modifying the code to avoid the false virus hit if you plan to redistribute code like this. Sorry!

Determine sizes of all subdirectories   Drag a folder onto this script (or install it as a right-click option) and it will tell you the size of all subfolders. Great for determing which folders can get backed up to a CD. I wrote this because under Win95, getting the properties for a folder to determine it's size fails -- it rolls over and starts over when it hits 2 gigabytes. Because it actually adds the file sizes of every file in every subdirectory, it isn't particularly fast, but at least it is accurate! Displays results as a pop-up box, but falls back to displaying as a text file if there is too much data to fit in a simple display box.

Find the CDROM  A script made to be used from a batch file -- but you can simplify it to stay in the scripting world. Finds the first drive letter that corresponds to a CDROM drive.

PrintWebPageWithWord   Illustrates how to automate Word to print a web page. My web page. Well, until you modify the code!

MakeAndRunBatchFile   Shows how to create, run, wait for, and delete a batch file from scripting.

UserIn   Shows how to create, run, wait for, and delete a script from a batch file. In a perverse twist, the created script has to in turn create a batch file of it's own in order to communicate results back to the original batch file. Why bother? Because it provides a really nice way to get user input in a batch file!

YC   Windows 2000/XP only  One thing I missed when I got moved from Win95 to Win2000 was the ability to single-step my batch files with the "command /y /c" command. Unfortunately, Win2K doesn't seem to have a way to single-step batch files. Not even if you try using an old copy of Win95 command.com! So I wrote this script. It works by constructing a special debug version of your batch file, launching it, then putting everything back to normal after the batch file finishes. It isn't the same as what I could do in Win95 (it won't single-step a "call"ed batch file), but it beats the heck out of watching programs crash and close before you can analyze things! It also adds "//x" to the command line for scripts to launch them with the debugger. Just drop a batch file on the script and start stepping through.

Compare  Someone asked how to compare two numbers from a batch file. As long as both numbers have the same number of digits, you could "echo" them into a file, "sort" the file, then use "fc" to see if the file changed. But what fun is that? That takes six lines of batch code. By using this script, you drop down to three lines of batch code AND you can use any operator (>, >=, =, <=, <) and you don't have to have same-length numbers (you can properly compare 003 and 4). So what if I used 60 lines of scripting to accomplish this trivial task?

Send Email  Self-defense information to help you (and me) out because I get asked how so often!

Scriptable Controls

Find Your IP Address  If you want to find the IP address of the computer your script is running on, this ActiveX DLL can help. Even better, do it natively.

Read Binary Data  An ActiveX DLL needed if you want your scripts to be able to read binary data (like a GIF picture or Excel file).

Convert Byte Array to String  An OCX that converts byte arrays to strings 2 to 3 times faster than native VBScript.

Web Server CGI Programs

XBM Page Counter   A CGI script or ASP (your choice) that shows a single XBM graphic containing multiple digits (instead of a separate graphic for each image) representing how many times your web page has been hit. Hit count data is stored in an Access database. The advantage of XBM graphics is that it is trivial to splice several separate digits into a single graphic. Maybe you've never heard of the XBM graphic format, but your browser probably has!

ChatCGI   A VBS chat CGI. Pretty straightforward. Displays the last 50 comments, allows users to enter new comments, and stores everything in an Access database via DAO.

Web Server Upload CGI  Yes, this is the same item I "cross-posted" above in the FTP upload section. It's there because it's an upload program, but it's here because it isn't FTP. I was frustrated over the lack of a simple file upload capability in IIS5. I tried Microsoft's NT4 upload acceptor for about ten minutes before I was overcome by the smell. I was too cheap to pay for a good commercial upload control, too lazy to invest time in the BinaryRead method, and too vain to allow someone's else's free upload control to display their logo on my web page. So I wrote my own.