Windows Script Host: CScript.exe and WScript.exe

Microsoft Windows Script Host (WSH) is a language-independent scripting host for Windows Script compatible scripting engines. It brings simple, powerful, and flexible scripting to the Windows platform, allowing you to run scripts from both the Windows desktop and the command prompt.  Windows Script Host has very low memory requirements, so it is ideal for both interactive and non-interactive scripting needs, such as logon scripting and administrative scripting.

There are two versions of WSH: a Windows-based version (Wscript.exe) that provides Windows-based properties for setting script properties, and a command prompt-based version (Cscript.exe) that provides command-line switches for setting script properties. For example, if you use Cscript your output from a Wscript.Echo statement will, by default, display to the command window; if you use Wscript that output will display in message boxes.

You can run either of these versions by typing "wscript.exe" or "cscript.exe" at a command prompt.

Windows Script Host supports scripts written in VBScript or JScript. When you start a script from your desktop or from the command prompt, the script host reads and passes the specified script file contents to the registered script engine. The script engine uses file extensions (that is, .vbs for VBScript and .js for JScript) to identify the script. As a result, you do not need to know the exact programmatic identifier (that is, the ProgID) of the script engine. The script host maintains a mapping of script extensions to programmatic identifiers, and uses the Windows association model to start the appropriate engine for a given script.

Creating Scripts That Can Be Used by WSH

A Windows script is a text file. You can create a script with any text editor as long as you save your script with a WSH-compatible script extension (.js, vbs, or .wsf).

For example, the following instructions shows you how to create a simple script with Notepad

1. Start Notepad.
2. Write your script. For example purposes, type WScript.Echo("Hello World!");
3. Save this text file with a .js extension (instead of the default .txt extension). For example, Hello.js.
4. Navigate to the file you just saved, and double-click it. (You may have to specify the Windows Script Host as the application to use.)
5. Windows Script Host invokes the JScript engine and runs your script. In the example, a message box is displayed with the message "Hello World!"

CScript.exe: Command-line based Script Host

Cscript.exe is a command-line version of the Windows Script Host (WSH) that provides command-line options for setting script properties.

With Cscript.exe, you can run scripts by typing the name of a script file at the command prompt.

 You can run scripts with the command-line-based script host by typing the following at the command prompt:

cscript [script name] [host options] [script arguments]

Where:

• script name is the name of the script file, including the file name extension and any necessary path information.

• host options are the command-line switches that enable or disable various Windows Script Host features. Host options are always preceded by two slashes (//).

• script arguments are the command-line switches that are passed to the script. Script arguments are always preceded by one slash (/).

Note