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vbscriptscriptingcmdnotepad++wsh

How to comfortably monitor variables in a VBscript during development process? (e.g. in a continuously opened command window)

I need to write a huge VBscript to automatically run an application and I'm looking for a way to comfortably monitor what I'm actually doing, in other words, to display the values of some/all variables involved in my script.

I'm used to work with Matlab, where I have a comfortable workspace browser. When I run a Matlab script, all variables, their types and their values are accessible in that workspace and can be checked.

The VBscript I write with Notepad++ (it needs to be a free editor) and the only way I found to display variables was echoing them via wscript and cscript.

I set up the shortcuts.xml with the following line to run my script directly from Notepad++:

<Command name="Run with CScript" Ctrl="yes" Alt="no" Shift="yes" Key="116">cmd /K %windir%\system32\cscript.exe &quot;$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)&quot;</Command>

In case I include commands in my script like 

Wscript.Echo myVar
Wscript.Echo "Hello World!"

and run it with the newly introduced shortcut, a cmd window pops up and displays the value of myVar and "Hello World!". But the next time I run the script a new window pops up. So my question is:

Is it possible get a continuously opened output window, displaying all echoed values everytime I run a script? I actually want to put the window on a second screen and keep the values from previous runs. So I can enter a line Wscript.Echo something, run, check, enter something else and so on, without fiddling around with a bunch of opened windows.

Alternatively, is there any open-source/free editor which offers an accessible workspace like the one in Matlab?

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Solution

  • The open-source editor SciTE offers what I was looking for.

    enter image description here

    The default settings in vb.properties enable a similar behavior like in Notepad++

    command.build.$(file.patterns.wscript)=cscript "$(FilePath)"
command.build.subsystem.$(file.patterns.wscript)=1

    One can change it as follows to get the output into the integrated console. 

    command.go.$(file.patterns.wscript)=cscript.exe //nologo "$(FilePath)"
command.go.subsystem.$(file.patterns.wscript)=0

    F5 runs the script and Shift+F5 cleans the output.

    Another option is the NppExec Plugin for Notepad++ suggested by @Ansgar Wiechers, which adds a console. The script can be run with cscript.exe /nologo "$(FULL_CURRENT_PATH)" then.