[VB6] Using VBScript's Escape and UnEscape (Take 2)

It's been pointed out to me recently that Escape() doesn't handle embedded quotes and embedded newlines. This is the fix.

I'm using JScript rather than VBScript, so that I can use the String object's fromCharCode() method. I parse the input string, convert the characters to a list of their numeric equivalents for passing to fromCharCode() and then store the result in a JScript variable which is then passed to escape().

Thanks to Anonymous and anjali kalkarni for pointing out the problem.

Option Explicit

Function Escape(s As Variant) As String
    Dim i As Long
    Dim text As String
    Dim scr As Object
    
    For i = 1 To Len(s)
        text = text & AscW(Mid$(s, i, 1))
        If i < Len(s) Then
            text = text & ","
        End If
    Next
    
    Set scr = CreateObject("MSScriptControl.ScriptControl")
    scr.Language = "JScript"
    scr.Reset    
    scr.Eval "var a = String.fromCharCode(" & text & ");"
    Escape = scr.Eval("escape(a)")
End Function

Function Unescape(s As Variant) As String
    Dim scr As New MSScriptControl.ScriptControl
    scr.Language = "JScript"
    scr.Reset
    scr.Eval "var a='" & s & "';"
    Unescape = scr.Eval("unescape(a)")
End Function

© Bruce M. Axtens, 2011

[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