Can I pass an argument to a VBScript vbs file launched with cscript

Question

I have this script saved in  test vbs    Set FSO   CreateObject  Scripting FileSystemObject   Set File   FSO OpenTextFile workFolder    test txt   2  True  File Write  testing  File Close Set File   Nothing Set FSO   Nothing Set workFolder   Nothing  When I run the script I want to pass the value of the  workFolder  variable   How can I do this  Can I do it  Something like  cscript test vbs workFolder  C  temp    perhaps   Bonus question  Is it neccessary to clean up the passed variable with  Set workFolder   Nothing  or does VBSCript do that automatically when it terminates  Maybe  Set File   Nothing  and  Set FSO   Nothing  is unneccessary also  Please let me know if you know the answer to both these questions

User · Answer

You can also use named arguments which are optional and can be given in any order    Set namedArguments   WScript Arguments Named   Here s a little helper function   Function GetNamedArgument ByVal argumentName  ByVal defaultValue    If WScript Arguments Named Exists argumentName  Then     GetNamedArgument   WScript Arguments Named Item argumentName     Else       GetNamedArgument   defaultValue   End If End Function   Example VBS     test vbs  testArg   GetNamedArgument  testArg    -unknown-   wscript Echo now  amp      amp  testArg   Example Usage   test vbs  testArg 123

User · Answer

You can use WScript Arguments to access the arguments passed to your script   Calling the script   cscript exe test vbs  C  temp     Inside your script   Set File   FSO OpenTextFile WScript Arguments 0   amp   test txt   2  True    Don t forget to check if there actually has been an argument passed to your script  You can do so by checking the Count property   if WScript Arguments Count   0 then     WScript Echo  Missing parameters  end if   If your script is over after you close the file then there is no need to set the variables to Nothing  The resources will be cleaned up automatically when the cscript exe process terminates  Setting a variable to Nothing usually is only necessary if you explicitly want to free resources during the execution of your script  In that case  you would set variables which contain a reference to a COM object to Nothing  which would release the COM object before your script terminates  This is just a short answer to your bonus question  you will find more information in these related questions      Is there a need to set Objects to Nothing inside VBA Functions        When must I set a variable to    Nothing    in VB6

User · Answer

Inside of VBS you can access parameters with   Wscript Arguments 0  Wscript Arguments 1    and so on  The number of parameter   Wscript Arguments Count

User · Answer

To answer your bonus question  the general answer is no  you don t need to set variables to  Nothing  in short  VBS scripts like yours  that get called by Wscript or Cscript   The reason you might do this in the middle of a longer script is to release memory back to the operating system that VB would otherwise have been holding  These days when 8GB of RAM is typical and 16GB  relatively common  this is unlikely to produce any measurable impact  even on a huge script that has several megabytes in a single variable  At this point it s kind of a hold-over from the days where you might have been working in 1MB or 2MB of RAM   You re correct  the moment your  VBS script completes  all of your variables get destroyed and the memory is reclaimed anyway  Setting variables to  Nothing  simply speeds up that process  and allows you to do it in the middle of a script

User · Answer

Each argument passed via command line can be accessed with  Wscript Arguments Item 0   Where the zero is the argument number  ie  0  1  2  3 etc   So in your code you could have    strFolder   Wscript Arguments Item 0    Set FSO   CreateObject  Scripting FileSystemObject   Set File   FSO OpenTextFile strFolder  2  True  File Write  testing  File Close Set File   Nothing Set FSO   Nothing Set workFolder   Nothing   Using wscript arguments count  you can error trap in case someone doesn t enter the proper value  etc   MS Technet examples

[vbscript] Can I pass an argument to a VBScript (vbs file launched with cscript)?

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