Script Editors 1500 PST | 23JAN'08 | Joe

The only tools you really need to work with VBScript is a text editor (like notepad). Now I hear that there are people that work with notepad as their only scripting tool for years, but that's not for me.

I personally like to have an editor that does a few things that notepad left out, like line numbering, and syntax highlighting. You would think that after 10-15 years or so that someone would have added at least line numbering to notepad (I'm looking at you Microsoft developers).

That's ok though as there is quite a thriving market for notepad replacements, and even several actual Integrated Development Environments (IDE's) designed specifically for VBScript.

Text Editors Versus IDE's Text editors are exactly that: a program designed primarily to edit text (like notepad). There are literally dozens of them available, ranging in price from free to several hundred dollars (fortunately for us, the best ones are free!).

IDE's on the other hand are more; they incorporate debuggers, and usually other scripting related programs (like source control, script packagers, etc.). IDE's are great once you get familiar with a language like VBScript, but if you are just starting out, you will probably want to stick to text editors as you will have no need for the more advanced features offered in an IDE for quite a while.

The Gold Standard in text editors If you are looking for something to use for scripting work instead of notepad, look no further than Notepad++ (well you can continue looking, but I'm pretty confident you'll come right back). I just can't say enough good things about Notepad++. As it happens, this entire website was created with it (yes I am aware that there are other tools that are more suited to web development, but I don't know how to use any as I'm not a web developer). Notepad++ did the job I needed it to, and I am pretty pleased with the end result.

Here is a quick description from the Notepad++ homepage:

quote

Notepad++ is a free (free as in "free speech", but also as in "free beer") source code editor and Notepad replacement, which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment. quote

Here are some of Notepad++'s features:

  • Line Numbering
  • Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
  • User Defined Syntax Highlighting
  • Auto-completion
  • Open multiple documents
  • Multiple view options
  • Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
  • File Status Auto-detection
  • Bookmark
  • Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
  • Macro recording and playback
  • Find and Find/Replace in one document, or in all open documents

In short, you are going to be hard pressed to find another text editor with the features of Notepad++. Lets look at the visual differences petween notepad and Notepad++. Figure 1 below shows a script in Notepad, and Figure 2 shows the same script in Notepad++.

Figure 1 notepad

Figure 2 notepad++

As you can see, there is quite a difference.

Choosing an IDE If you feel that it is time for you to move on to a full blown IDE, there are a handful available, but two stand at the top of the heap; Admin Script Editor from iTripoli, and PrimalScript from Sapien Technologies. I have quite a bit of experience with both, and they are both good.

I started out in scripting IDE's using Admin Script Editor (ASE), it has all of the features you would expect from an IDE, and more.

PrimalScript has it's advantages, though you are going to pay more for them. Personally I am lucky enough to have had employers pay for both, so I have been able to really get to know the ins and outs of both.

PrimalScript is great, but I personally prefer ASE. The feature sets are almost identical, but the features I use most seem more refined in ASE. A good example of this is the code packaging features that each provides (which is coincidentally the major reason I switched to an IDE in the first place).

ASE was the first commercial product to offer a code packaging feature, and it shows. The array of features that the ASE ScriptPackager offers are unmatched. PrimalScript's Evolved Script Packager does allow you to create executable files from your scripts, however the process is unintuitive, cumbersome, and lacking in features when compared to the ASE ScriptPackager.

I should note here that prior to version 3.0 of ASE, they only offered one license type at $99, which included all features. This was an enormous advantage over PrimalScript, as to get the full feature set in PrimalScript you have to buy their Enterprise Edition (this is now true of ASE as well).

As I purchased a license for version 2.0 of ASE, I got a "free" upgrade to the Enterprise Edition (which is nice). At first I was very upset at this change, until I started exploring the changes in ASE 3.0, and have since decided that the price hike is well worth the added features and functionality.

It comes down to this: The Enterprise Edition of PrimalScript can be purchased for $379. This is Sapien Technologies' flagship product, and is a full featured and very capable scripting IDE. For eighty dollars less you spend $299 for the Enterprise Edition of ASE, which in my opinion is a superior scripting IDE, with a comparable (I believe better) feature set to Sapien's offering.

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