VBScript vs. JScript

VBScript vs. JScript

1.2, 2005-07-09

Brian Lalonde

VBScript and JScript are extremely lightweight ActiveX Scripting languages. ActiveX Scripting Engines may be used in a variety of Microsoft environments: Windows Scripting Host, HyperText Applications, HyperText Components and scripting for Internet Explorer, and classic Active Server Pages. There are other ActiveX Scripting languages, such as ActivePerl and ActivePython, but these tend to be complete languages in contrast to the minimal logic layer that VBScript and JScript provide. In fact, VBS/JS must use ActiveX/COM components to accomplish anything other than trivial tasks. This optimization results in some noteworthy shortcomings in both languages.

VBScript Strengths

• The De Facto Standard

VBScript is typically the default scripting language for ActiveX Scripting environments, and so is used far more widely than any other scripting engine. The English-like syntax is arguably more approachable for less technical users. VBScript SafeArrays are typically the type of array expected by COM components (e.g. the ActiveDirectory Filter property).

• By Reference Parameters

Multiple, bidirectional, or large arguments may be passed ByRef. This bypasses creating a local copy of the variable (increasing efficiency for large values), and allows the function or subroutine to make changes to a variable passed to it.

• Formatting Functions

FormatCurrency, FormatDateTime, FormatNumber, and FormatPercent not only make short work of tedious formatting tasks, but also use locale-specific formatting rules.

• Data Conversion

CBool, CByte, CCur, CDate, CDbl, CInt, CLng, CSng, and CStr all tend to overreact to unconvertable data by throwing runtime errors, but are complemented by VarType, IsDate, IsEmpty, IsNull, IsNumeric, and IsObject. Hex and Oct allow converting numbers to non-decimal strings (though no functions are provided to do the inverse). DateValue and TimeValue allow returning just the parsed date or time values, respectively.

• Date/Time Support

Along with the usual functions for individual date fields, Day, Hour, Minute, Month, MonthName, Second, Timer, Weekday, WeekdayName, Year, and the more generic DatePart, there are some more granular functions for current info: Now, Date, Time. The DateSerial and TimeSerial functions allow for complex date arithmetic, as do DateAdd, DateDiff. Date literals are supported, using # as the delimiter: #datestring# (using various formats). Durations can be stored as date/time values, except month durations.

• Built-In Iterator Support

Collections (objects containing multiple values that can only be accessed one after the other, starting at the first) can be iterated natively using For Each.

• Constants

VBScript supports true constants, which are faster than alternatives (variables or functions), and enforce the read-only nature of constants.

• With Blocks

Using With allows you to perform several operations on an object without using a temporary variable. It is particularly well-suited to DOM programming. The VBScript syntax for With blocks is unambiguous, so there are no performance or readablity drawbacks.

With xml.appendChild(xml.createElement("category")) 
      

  .setAttribute("id",id) 
      

  .setAttribute("keywords",keywords) 
      

  With .appendChild(xml.createElement("item")) 
      

    .setAttribute("count",count) 
      

    .setAttribute("tip",tip) 
      

    .appendChild(xml.createTextNode(text)) 
      

  End With 
      

End With 
      

VBScript Weaknesses

• Unforgivably Bad Array Support

While standard functions like Filter, Join, and Split are supplied; no sort, slice, splice, or concatenation functions exist. The stack and queue functions: push, pop, shift, and unshift are also missing.

• Inefficient String Concatenation

Appending to strings in VBScript is shockingly slow. VBScript code should avoid repeated concatenation whenever possible.

• No UTC Support

Date/time values cannot be reliably converted between UTC and local timezones, since there is no way to determine either the local timezone or Daylight Saving Time (Summer Time in Europe ) observance.

• Clumsy Exception Handling

Automatic exception handling has two modes: on (all errors and warnings are fatal), and off. Modern, structured exception handling is not supported.

• Unreasonably Strong Typing

Objects are not first-class objects; assignment, for example, is handled completely differently from built-in datatypes. Passing functions as arguments requires using the GetRef keyword. Adding to this difficulty, naught is expressed in many distinct (and confusing) terms: Nothing is an invalid object variable, Null adds the database-style complexity of three-valued logic (not true, but not false either), and Empty is the value in an uninitialized variable. Numeric values can be interpreted as booleans, as can some string values (but only if they are numeric or boolean strings):

VBScript Boolean Conversion

Expression	Value
True, Not False	True
False, Not True	False
Null, Not Null	Null
Empty	False
0, 0.0	False
1, 2, 3, ..., 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, ...	True
"0", "00", "000", ...	False
"1", "2", "3", ...	True
"True", "TRUE", "true", "tRuE", ...	True
"False", "FALSE", "false", "fAlSe", ...	False
"", "null", "yes", "no", "t", "f", ...	Error
#00:00#	False
#00:01#, #Jan 1, 2000#, ...	True
Nothing	Error

• No Short-Circuit Operators

The only way to avoid evaluating conditions in VBScript is to put them into separate If statements. This means much more verbose code when the second condition relies on the success of the previous one:

' Wrong 
      

If Not conn Is Nothing And conn.State = ADODB.adStateOpen Then ' won't work 
      

  ' continue 
      

Else 
      

  ' problem 
      

End If 
      

' Redundant Workaround 
      

If Not conn Is Nothing Then 
      

  If conn.State = ADODB.adStateOpen Then 
      

    ' continue 
      

  Else 
      

    ' problem (first time) 
      

  End If 
      

Else 
      

  ' problem (again) 
      

End If 
      

' Manual Short-Circuit Workaround 
      

Dim ok 
      

ok= Not conn Is Nothing 
      

If ok Then ok= conn.State = ADODB.adStateOpen ' conditional second test 
      

If ok Then 
      

  ' continue 
      

Else 
      

  ' problem 
      

End If 
      

JScript Strengths

• JavaScript/ECMAScript Overlap

Anyone familiar with client-side web scripting can start using JScript right away.

• Strong Array Support

A reasonable complement of expected array functions is supported: sort, split, join, slice, splice, concat, push, pop, shift, unshift, and reverse. No grep/filter, search, or membership-test function are provided.

• Native Associative Arrays (hashes)

Actually, all JScript arrays are hashes: an array with numeric keys can have string keys added, and all keys can be iterated via the for...in loop. As Perl programmers already know, native hash support allows arbitrarily complex data structures to be built quite easily.

• Structured Exception Handling

Using try...catch, errors can be handled much more readably, maintainably, and conveniently.

• Conditional Compilation

Specially formatted comments can be used to hide code from the scripting engine based on platform or JScript version for last-minute optimization.

• UTC Support

Date/time values can be converted between UTC and local timezones, even handling Daylight Saving Time (Summer Time in Europe ).

• Short-Circuit Boolean Operators

JScript stops evaluating a conditional expression as soon as it knows the outcome, skipping superfluous subexpressions. Not only is this more efficient, but it enables subexpressions to assume previous subexpressions have succeeded:

if(conn && conn.State == ADODB.adStateOpen) conn.Execute(SQL); 
      

JScript Weaknesses

• No Reference Argument Support

Any COM components that require reference parameters are completely useless to JScript.

• Unconventional

Tool support for JScript tends to be somewhat scarcer than VBScript. Productive familiarity with the language is also less common, particularly outside of web development groups.

• Stunningly Inadequate Formatting Facilities

All languages should have some kind of formatting ability: C's (and Perl's) printf, C++'s iomanip.h library, Python's % operator, etc. JScript has only toFixed and toExponential for specifying the number of digits a number should include after the decimal. Doing something as simple as grouping digits in a number is incredibly tedious. Localized formatting is completely out of the question.

• Limited Data Conversion Support

Dates and non-decimal numbers (e.g. hexadecimal strings) are not converted natively.

• Limited Data Types

No native currency (fixed decimal) type is supported, so rounding errors may have a tendency to creep into many calculations. In fact, all numbers are treated as double floating point; no integer, long integer, or single float types are available.

• Lousy Date/Time Support

No functions exist specifically for date/time arithmetic, and there is an inadequate granularity for parsing control. No date literal is supported.

• No Constants

Special values must be stored in variables, or trivial functions, neither of which are optimal.

• Poor with Blocks

Since the syntax for with blocks in JScript is ambiguous, members (indeed, all variables and functions within the block) must be searched for and bound at runtime. Without any distinguishing features, it is also impossible to see which items are members of the with object when reading the code.

with(o) 
      

{ 
      

  a=x; // o.a=x or a=o.x or o.a=o.x or just a=x ?  
      

  M(w); // o.M(w) or M(o.w) or o.M(o.w) or just M(w) ? 
       

} 
      

The interpreter (and the reader) has no way to know which items within the with block are members of o, so it has to wait until runtime and painstakingly check each item.

• Clumsy Collection Iteration

Looping over items in a collection requires an Enumerator object.

for(var e= new Enumerator(fso.Drives); !e.atEnd(); e.moveNext()) 
      

{ 
      

  WScript.Echo(e.item().DriveLetter); 
      

}