Windows Shell Scripting and WSH Administrator's Guide [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Jerry Lee Ford Jr. (Author) "Despite its ease of use and intuitive design, many tasks are difficult to perform using the Windows graphical user interface, or GUI..." (more)
Key Phrases: shell script programmer, new shell session, pushd command, Richmond Virginia, Quick Launch, Internet Explorer (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This book is designed to help administrators of small-to-medium-sized business automate routine network and user tasks. Unlike the competition, this book offers coverage of Windows Shell Scripting, Windows Script Host, and Windows 2000 under one cover.

About the Author
Jerry Lee Ford, Jr. is an author, educator, and IT professional with over 13 years experience in information technology. He is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and has also earned Microsoft's MCP & MCP+Internet certification. He holds a master's degree in Business Administration and has been a part-time IT instructor for five years. Jerry is the author of nine books, including "Microsoft Windows Shell Scripting and WSH Administrator's Guide" (ISBN: 1931841268). He lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and sons.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 500 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1st edition (November 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931841268
• ISBN-13: 978-1931841269
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #486,498 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Windows *shell* scripting? ROTFL, December 28, 2001

By A Customer

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a classic, February 2, 2006

By	Richard D. (VA, USA) - See all my reviews

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.

9 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Don't buy this book, September 26, 2003

By	Nathan (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

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.