Vance Hunt
Columnist Vance Hunt has provided home-user help desk style support for his consulting company for over 6 years. Making his home in beautiful Southern California, Vance provides general computer Q&A for users via his weekly column.
Questions or comments for Vance may be sent to AskVance@Dx21.com  Before Editing The Registry.... Click Here.
| Yeah! - more Vista "Features"
Column Date: 5/23/2008 (View Current) Q: I'm running Vista. I use the MSTSC [Remote Desktop] to administer my
servers. I need to ensure that I attach to the console of the servers and
not a terminal session, so I've always used the /console
switch. No issues ever on XP or 2003, and I hadn't any issues for a while
on Vista. But for the last few months, it doesn't work. I keep the
/console switch in and it just connects me to any session it feels like. A: If you didn't need any other reason to hang your head and groan when it comes
to Vista, welcome to Service Pack 1! SP1 made changes to Vista to help
bring it closer in line with the Server 2008 line of products, one of which was
changing the (simplified here) the name "console" to "administrative session".
Your immediate realization of this is that when Vista was released, MSTSC
accepted the /console switch. When SP1 was
released, MSTSC had the /console switch removed, and
the /admin switch added. Of course, everyone
that was using the /console switch never got any
errors or notices that it wasn't supported. So, the end result is that
when using Vista SP1 or greater and Windows Server 2008, use the /admin switch
to connect to the "administrative session" on Windows Server 2008 as well as the
"console" on Windows Server 2003. You can read
more about it here if you care.
Q: When using the dictionary object in VBScript, I know how to search for an
item by knowing it's key, but how do I search for a key knowing the item value? A: For those unfamiliar with the Scripting Dictionary object, you can get a good
overview
here, and a reference to the different properties and methods
here.
Just to ensure that we are always talking about the same thing, the syntax
for a Dictionary object is:
object Key, Item
Where the Key is typically a short identifier for
the large amount of Item data.
I'm always somewhat surprised when I find people using the Dictionary object.
I have always considered it to be one of those hidden gems that seems to always
become forgotten, lost somewhere between arrays, arrays of custom data types,
and ADO record sets. Nevertheless, when you find you need it, it fits the
bill exactly. Although, as you have pointed out, it does make a few
assumptions, the most glaring of which is that you as a developer seem to never
have a need to find a specific dictionary entry given only the
Item data. A way does exist:
01 Option Explicit
02
03 Dim objDict
04 Dim Index, strTemp
05 Dim vKey, vItem
06
07 'Create and Populate Dictionary object
08 Set objDict = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
09 For Index = 1 to 12
10 'Syntax: object.Add Key, Item
11 objDict.Add CStr(Index), MonthName(Index)
12 Next
13
14 'Easy search for Key
15 vKey = InputBox("Enter a Month Number (1 thru 12)","Find Key","5")
16 If objDict.Exists(vKey) Then
17 WScript.Echo objDict.Item(vKey)
18 Else
19 WScript.Echo "Key not Found"
20 End If
21
22 'Search for Item
23 vItem = InputBox("Enter a Month Name","Find Item","May")
24 strTemp = FindKeyFromItem(vItem,objDict)
25 If strTemp = vbNull Then
26 WScript.Echo "Key not found"
27 Else
28 WScript.Echo "Key: " & strTemp
29 End If
30
31 Set objDict = Nothing
32
33 Function FindKeyFromItem(vItem, objDictionary)
34 Dim objItems, objKeys
35 Dim Index
36
37 objItems = objDictionary.Items
38 objKeys = objDictionary.Keys
39
40 For Index = 0 To objDictionary.Count -1
41 If LCase(vItem) = LCase(objItems(Index)) Then
42 FindKeyFromItem = objKeys(Index)
43 Exit Function
44 End If
45 Next
46
47 FindKeyFromItem = vbNull
48 End Function
The function FindKeyFromItem is what does all the
work. It does so by taking the Dictionary's Keys and Items and separating
them into two arrays. It then enumerates the Items array, and if a match
is found, it returns the Key value at the same index position as the Item data
was found in. Certainly not the best use of system memory, but one does
what they have to do.
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