Comparing Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, and VBScript

VBScript is a subset of Microsoft Visual Basic (VB) and Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Developers that know either VB or VBA already know VBScript!

Some points of interest about VBScript as compared to VB/VBA are as follows:

• The "Dim" statement is used without defining the variable type in VBScript because all variables in VBScript are automatically of type Variant. For example:

VBScript Implementation	VB/VBA Implementation
Dim X X = 12	Dim X As Integer X = 12
Dim X X = "Hello"	Dim X As String X = "Hello"

• VBScript Macros do not have to be placed inside "Sub" and "End Sub" declarations.

VBScript Implementation	VB/VBA Implementation
Dim X X = "Hello" MsgBox X	Sub Main() Dim X As String X = "Hello" MsgBox X End Sub

• VBScript does not support Goto, Gosub, line numbers, or line labels.
• VBScript does not support DDE commands.
• VBScript does not support normal file I/O commands such as Open, Read, Line Input, etc. File access in VBScript is provided through the FileSystemObject. For more information refer to Microsoft's VBScript Documentation.
• VBScript does not support the "Like" operator for string comparison. Use the InStr function instead.

VBScript Implementation

X = "Hello" If Instr(1, X, "ello") > 0 Then MsgBox "'ello' is like 'Hello'" End If If Instr(1, X, "Jello") = 0 Then MsgBox "'Jello' is not like 'Hello'" End If

VB/VBA Implementation

X = "Hello" If X Like "*ello*" Then MsgBox "'ello' is like 'Hello'" End If If Not X Like "*Jello*" Then MsgBox "'Jello' is not like 'Hello'" End If

• VBScript does not support the Mid statement. Use a combination of Left and Right instead.

VBScript Implementation

Dim X X = "Hello" Y = Right(Left(X,2),1) ' Note: Now Y = "e"

• VBScript does not support financial functions.
• VBScript does not support Collections.

A Complete list of all the differences between VB/VBA and VBScript is in Microsoft's VBScript documentation.