Published: Tuesday, December 21, 1999
Determining the Server-Side Scripting Language and Version
Curious what server-side scripting language you are using, when developing your ASP pages?
(Of course, if you are writing your own ASP pages, you should know this already.) Or,
perhaps you do not know what version of the scripting engine you are using? If you want
to find out the answer to either of these two questions, you can use a couple of rarely
discussed functions: ScriptEngine, ScriptEngineMajorVersion, and
ScriptEngineMinorVersion.
For example, the following snippet of code:
<%=ScriptEngine%><BR>
<%=ScriptEngineMajorVersion%><BR>
<%=ScriptEngineMinorVersion%><BR>
|
Produced the following output:
VBScript
5
0
Now, you may be asking yourself, "When the heck am I going to be needig to use this?"
It's a valid question; there aren't many circumstances in which you need to know the
server-side scripting language and version. However, here are some times when these
functions might come in handy:
- If you need to quickly determine what scriptig engine version you have installed on your
computer, use the
ScriptEngineMajorVersion and
ScriptEngineMinorVersion functions. (There are new objects and methods that
version 5 adds from version 4.)
- If you work with a team of developers who use different server-side languages, and want to have each page indicate the server-side scripting language and engine version used to ease debugging, use the
ScriptEngine function.
- Finally, if you are building ASP scripts that you expect others to be able to "plug"
into their website, you might be using features that are only supported by the version 5
scripting engine and up - you would want to test to make sure the user was using version 5
or greater before running an ASP page.
To download the latest version of the VBScript or JScript scripting engine, head on over
to
http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/default.htm?/scripting/vbscript/download/vbsdown.htm!
I hope you've learned something new!! :) Happy Programming!
