VBScript Editors

I've been coming up the learning curve on VBScript for most of my Custom Action tasks. After working in Notepad and the Micrsoft Script Debugger for a few weeks, I finally decided to download every editor I could find to see which ones had the best features. I thought I would share my findings for other people that are getting started.

VbsEditor is a freeware program that offers fairly good color coded syntax hightlighting and good text editing capabilities. It's available from http://www.koala.it/Eng/script.htm.

PrimalScript is a retail package ($149 USD) that offers everything you would expect in a full Integrated Development Environment. Color-coded syntax highlighting, run the script and capture output to an output window, debug script (if the Micorosft Script Debugger or Visual Studio is installed), and the most usefull feature is what they call their PrimalSense feature. If you're familiar with Microsoft's IntelliSense features in their IDE's, it's exactly the same.

For instance, type CTRL+Enter and it brings up a drop down list of every VBScript intrinsic function. Pick an item from the list and then it shows you all the parameters. If you've already written a subroutine somewhere in your .vbs file, you can type your function name and it will correct the case and display a parameter list for your function. Very cool!!!

And last but not least, it even recognizes objects. I typed in
Dim Test1
Set Test1 = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

and when I type in "Test1." on the next line, it brought up all the available methods and properties for the file system object. I don't yet know if this works for any ActiveX library (with good embedded type library descriptions) or if it's a hard coded list in some .ini file.

I know this is going to cut hours off my development time so I thought I would share it with everyone else.

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hambone

Stefan Krueger