I tend to take for granted all the command line tools and languages that come with Unix, whether Linux or OSX, and am amazed at how Windows is so sparse in that area. I want to replace a value in a config file for a period of time and then change it back. On Unix it isn't a big deal; perl, sed, cron, there are plenty of tool to get it done quickly and in manner that is robust.

Windows is a different issue. I admit to not being familiar with Windows and its scripting tools; however, it wouldn't kill them to implement the tools that come with Unix directly rather than all the bodged up forms that Windows has. Since I can't guarantee things will be installed on these servers, I have to use one that is out of the box with Windows.

I discovered Windows has script, which is great. Even better it supports JScript (or ECMAScript more commonly known as javascript everywhere else). So I wrote a simple shell script that got an object not found error. Blech, no worries. this happens in scripting. I fired up Visual Studio, imported the JS file expecting to be able to step through it in the debugger; no dice.

I then tried starting a cscript project in Visual Studio that used JScript. I couldn't find anything in either VS2008 or VS2010 to do that. I guess I am stuck with Echo() trying to work out what is going on. My programming technique is guess a function from javascript, watch it fail, and then google the error and find something close Cut and paste that in to see if it works.

It is highly scientific (read bodge job). Not cool. If Windows installed perl, cron, etc this would have been a ten minute job, instead I am stuck wasting time trying to navigate through msdn's online mess and getting stuck in J# examples rather than JScript. Meh.