I always try to keep any neat tools I find around in the back of my head in case I may have a use for them some day. I finally have a use for KiXtart[1], a scripting language for Windows somewhere between batch files and VBScript, with a lot more useful stuff thrown in, and without a lot of the anguish of either.
Previously I'd been using a Windows Script Host script in JScript to script (jeez) backups, but a few factors combined to make me switch. 7-Zip (which I'm using to do the backups) has a weird convention for command-line arguments that requires paths to be relative. So, I have to do a cd to c:\ and then specify the path names without the "c:\" on them. I found out that the way to combine two commands in one line on the command shell was to stick an ampersand between them. So, my command line was essentially "cd c:\ & {path to 7-zip}7z.exe {args, etc.}". While that worked fine from the command shell, for whatever reason WshShell.Run() choked on it. So I thought, screw this, the script was simple enough that I was just going to switch it back to using a batch file, which I'd been using in the past but switched from because I wanted to do some extra things such as pop up dialogs.
We back-up to CD-RW, and as I was about to put together the batch file, I thought it'd be nice to be able to check the size of backup.zip against the amount of free space on the CD, so I could find out before I tried copying the file that there wasn't enough room for it. I have no clue how to find out the remaining free space on a drive from batch files (besides "dir", but that doesn't give me something I can use programmatically). So, I went to see if KiXtart was what I wanted, and it totally is. It happens to have some handy functions called GetDiskSpace and GetFileSize that do what I want. No more fiddling with weird Windows Script Host objects to try to make them do what I want.
KiXtart really does a lot... it allows you to easily write to the registry, do stuff with Windows system stuff like manipulating users, it allows you to script applications using COM automation or plain old SetFocus and SendKeys functions, has good integration with the shell, and it even has an RPC service you can run to allow remote administration. KiXtart is really geared towards network administrators writing logon scripts. And of course KiXtart has the requisite set of BASIC functions. 
However, I was very surprised when I found that there's an extension to KiXtart called KiXforms that allows you to write GUI apps using KiXtart.
So I'm psyched that I have a new tool in my disposal for scripting windows. I hope to never have to mess with Windows Script Host (huge pain in the ass) or try to hack up complicated batch files again. For more info, check out:
Footnotes:
[1]: which I discovered over two years ago... boy was the world different on that day
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
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There is a great KiXtart reference at this site: http://www.Dx21.com/scripting/kixtart/index.asp