Code-a-holic: July 2009

Thursday, July 02, 2009

[VB6] Using VBScript's Escape and UnEscape

Something again from an answer I gave on StackOverflow. This one demonstrates how to use MSScriptControl.ScriptControl to make VBScript's Escape and Unescape functions available to the VB6 programmer.

The best thing would be add MSSCRIPT.OCX to the project, but for the sake of demonstration, I'll use CreateObject instead.

Function Escape(s As String) As String
    Dim scr As Object
    Set scr = CreateObject("MSScriptControl.ScriptControl")
    scr.Language = "VBScript"
    scr.Reset
    Escape = scr.Eval("escape(""" & s & """)")
End Function

Function Unescape(s As String) As String
    Dim scr As Object
    Set scr = CreateObject("MSScriptControl.ScriptControl")
    scr.Language = "VBScript"
    scr.Reset
    Unescape = scr.Eval("unescape(""" & s & """)")
End Function

Using the code is easy.

'assuming sData contains "よろてそ"
sEsc = Escape(sData)
'which gives %u3088%u308D%u3066%u305D
sUnEsc = Unescape(sEsc)

It's that simple. And the technique can be used to get at other VBScript functionality. In fact, .Language can have values other than "VBScript", making it possible to interface to any language with a Windows Scripting Host presence.

© Copyright Bruce M. Axtens, 2009