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{{Short description|Scripting language based on COM-based Visual Basic}}

factoids

VBScript (Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is a deprecated programming language for scripting on Microsoft Windows using Component Object Model (COM) based on classic Visual Basic and Active Scripting.VBScript was popular with system administrators for managing computers; automating many aspects of computing environment.VBScript running environments include: Windows Script Host (WSH), Internet Explorer (IE), and Internet Information Services (IIS).What is VBScript?, in MSDN Library The running environment is embeddable in other programs via the Microsoft Script Control ({{Mono|msscript.ocx}}).VBScript has been installed by default in every desktop release of Microsoft Windows since Windows 98;WSH Version Information, on MSDN in Windows Server since Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack;VBScript Version Information, on MSDN and optionally with Windows CE (depending on the device it is installed on).In October 2023, Microsoft announced that VBScript is deprecated and is slated to be removed in a future release.WEB,weblink Deprecated features in the Windows client - What's new in Windows, 7 November 2023,

History

VBScript began as part of the Microsoft Windows Script Technologies, launched in 1996. This technology (which also included JScript) was initially targeted at web developers. During a period of just over two years, VBScript advanced from version 1.0 to 2.0, and over that time it gained support from Windows system administrators seeking an automation tool more powerful than the batch language first developed in the early 1980s.86-DOS On August 1, 1996, Internet Explorer was released with features that included VBScript.WEB,weblink The History of Visual Basic, www.johnsmiley.com, In version 5.0, the functionality of VBScript was increased with new features including regular expressions; classes; the With statement;Visual Basic Scripting Edition: With Statement, on MSDN the Eval, Execute, and ExecuteGlobal functions to evaluate and execute script commands built during the execution of another script; a function-pointer system via GetRef,GetRef Function, on MSDN and Distributed COM (DCOM) support.In version 5.5, SubMatchesVisual Basic Scripting Edition: SubMatches Collection, on MSDN were added to the regular expression class in VBScript, to finally allow script authors to capture the text within the expression's groups. That capability had already been available in JScript.With the advent of the .NET Framework, the scripting team decided to implement future support for VBScript within ASP.NET for web development,What About VBScript?, within the article Introducing JScript .NET by Andrew Clinick of Microsoft Corporation, in Scripting Clinic on MSDN (July 14, 2000) and therefore no new versions of the VBScript engine would be developed. It would henceforth be supported by Microsoft's Sustaining Engineering Team, who are responsible for bug fixes and security enhancements. For Windows system administrators, Microsoft suggests migrating to Windows PowerShell, as VBScript is deprecated and will eventually be removed from Windows.

Environments

Client-side web

In a web page loaded by Internet Explorer, VBScript is similar in function to JavaScript. The VBScript code in the HTML is logic that interacts with the Document Object Model (DOM) of the page allowing for functionality not possible in HTML alone. However, other web browsers such as Chrome, Firefox and Opera do not support VBScript. Therefore, when client-side scripting and cross-browser compatibility are required, developers usually choose JavaScript due to its wide cross-browser compatibility.

Active server page

VBScript is used for server-side web page functionality via Active Server Pages (ASP). The ASP engine, {{Mono|asp.dll}}, invokes {{Mono|vbscript.dll}} to run VBScript scripts. VBScript that is embedded in an ASP page is contained within context switches. The following example displays the current time in 24-hour format.