And this is VBScript interactive shell, written Apr 01, 2004, and concerning Uncategorized

One of the things I really love about Python is the interactive shell; when I think “how do I do X in Python?” then I can just drop to a shell, type “python“, and then try stuff out. I can’t do that in VBScript, and it annoys me. So: an interactive VBScript shell.

do while true
  wscript.stdout.write(">>> ")
  ln = wscript.stdin.readline
  if lcase(trim(ln)) = "exit" then exit do
  on error resume next
  err.clear
  execute ln
  if err.number <> 0 then wscript.echo(err.description)
  on error goto 0
loop

Note that this is totally daft and it doesn’t do anythng complex at all. No line continuations. No cleverness. But it helps me to answer the sorts of questions I come up with a lot, like “does a string with length > 0 evaluate to True?” without having to create a .vbs file and run it. You need to run this from the command line with cscript.

Comments

Roberto

Do you have a Fortran version? :)

I agree with you, the interactive shell is one of the best things about Python. Everytime I'm coding in Fortran (really, I do that) I almost get crazy.

Rob Eberhardt, Slingshot Solutions

Ha, great minds think alike!

I wrote a GUI (WScript) version of this a while back. Here's the whole thing (hope it displays right):

OPTION EXPLICIT

DIM strCodeToExec

strCodeToExec = "msgbox Now()"

DO WHILE strCodeToExec<>""

strCodeToExec = InputBox("Enter VBS code to execute", "WSH Prompt", strCodeToExec)

IF strCodeToExec<>"" THEN

on error resume next

execute(strCodeToExec)

IF err.Number<>0 THEN

call msgbox("Error #" & err.number & vbCRLF & err.description, vbExclamation, "Run Error")

END IF

on error goto 0

END IF

LOOP

</code></pre>

It just prompts for code (with an inputbox), execs that code & then asks for more. Quite handy.

Btw, it's downloadable as "WSHPrompt" at http://slingfive.com/pages/tools/.

Martin

How does the original script work?
There’s no such object as “wscript“. How do you create such an object?

I’d really love to see a working version of this.

Thanks,
Martin

sil

Martin: put the code in a file called “vbs.vbs“, and then run it with “cscript //nologo vbs.vbs“.

Chris Patti

Martin, this is an *incredibly* useful script. I find being able to prototype my code interactively to be such a huge productivity win - I think *every* interpreted language should provide such a thing.

Thanks so much!

-Chris