Customer Reviews

Windows Shell Scripting and WSH Administrator's Guide

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I wanted to give this book more than 3 stars, if only to show that the topic wasn't causing me to be prejudiced against it.

Really, I wanted to be able to sit down with book for half an hour and at least have an idea of what Windows shell scripting was about--but it wasn't easy to really wrap my mind around it even after flipping through the chapters, reading the first chapters, looking at the figures and tables, trying to get an idea of an organic framework for scripting.

Instead, I came away with two feelings:

1. Microsoft sure knows how to turn something relatively simple into something that's quite complicated. Shell scripting is pretty straightforward in *nix, and there aren't a ton of switches, buttons, and checkboxes involved with making them run. As far as I can tell, there is a fair amount of that to do with Windows scripts. So I really wouldn't want to have to use Windows shell scripting at all.

2. I wanted the author here to at least give me a sense of what can be done with scripts under Windows. He mentioned a CD with example code on it in the first pages, but there was no other indication of such a CD. So, that's bad editing. But, there also was no overall framework for example scripts throughout the book. I would have preferred to see more examples that build on each other more coherently. And I would have liked to see many of the lists of commands, functions, parameters, and what-have-you segregated from the rest of the text. They're distracting.

Overall, if you must have a book on WSH and Windows shell scripting, I suppose this one might be OK, but the Tim Hill book (which was published in 1998) seems to be, by far, the more popular book. It also seems to be the only other book on Windows scripting, but it also has an average rating of nearly 5 stars from over 30 reviewers, so you might want to check that one out.

This book provides a streamlined approached to learning how to work with WSH and VBScript and JScript. Is also covers Windows shell programming. It is written in a way that anyone can understand. Despite a few typos and a little age, this book is still a classic and provides a perfect text for jumping into the world of Windows scripting.

I bought this book because I wanted to learn VBS to do network administration tasks. Most of the VBS books out there cover topics more relating to web development, so this one sounded more geared toward what I was looking for.

I've found that this book will get someone by, but there has got to be something better out there. The author does a poor job at explaining a lot of the sample code, if at all. Many of the syntaxes that a new VBS programmer will need, are not explained, or explained poorly, leaving the reader with only a slightly better understanding then they started with. There are also references to a CD which isn't included.

The book also includes Javascript as well as VBScript in every example. It forces you to jump around because no one is going to try and learn both languages at the same time. There are also a number of inconsistencies in the examples which I can only assume to be typo's, because they are not explained anywhere, and make no sense. In conclusion, find something better.

This book is probably the most poorly written book ever, not only is it cumbersome to read, its got more typos than a 2nd graders homework. For example on page 111 the author shows some code samples with the named element %string_name....

but refers to that named element as %variable_name... in the the text. Utterly confusing to a casual reader. Honestly 1 star is too much for this book. Was the editor asleep? or was there even an editor?

A lesson to you aspiring writers, Proof Read your work, because every one sees the typos.

I found the book easy to understand. It has tons of examples and was written in a very friendly style. Coverage was split equally between Windows shell scripting and the Windows Script Host. The book might be a little less than heavy weight programmers are looking for but for the rest of us, its right on target. Thanks.......