Vista - What's inside an object?

I'm a little confused about objects/collections and what's inside them. How
can I determine programatically what is inside an object? Take, for example,
this code fragment:

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set cDrives = oFSO.Drives

I already know that I can set up a loop "for each oDrive in cDrives" but I
don't know how I can look at a specific drive without going through the
whole collection. The code "oDrives.Item.AvailableSpace" doesn't seem to
work.

Here is another example, using the Excel object:
oSheet.Range("E1").EntireColumn.activate
Set oFind = oExcel.Selection.find("unassigned")

How can I find out what items are inside oFind?

Thanks for your help!

James Watkins wrote:hi James,

That's a lot of questions. The quick answer is RTFM,
that is, get the documentation and read it.

There are such things as "object browsers", which allow
you to see all the methods, properties and enums of
an object. And, if the object's programmer used readily
understandable names for the methods and properties, you
could probably make out what's going on. But then, there
are parameters galore, and at some point the guessing
becomes pointless, and you MUST get the documentation.

As for some of the specific questions, you can address
any specific item in a collection by its index, i.e.,

...item(2).someProperty

or, in some other cases, you might be able to use an
alpha index, i.e.,

,,,item("A").someProperty

Again, what you can get away with is dependent on what
the original developer wrote into his/her code -- and
for that you need to read the documentation.

As far as Excel (and for that matter msWord, msIE, etc)
google up "Excel Object Model". As far as scripting
msXL and msWD, unless I know explicitly what I am doing
I tend to use the "macro recorder". You turn it on, and
go (manually) through the steps you want to script. Then
you turn off the recorder, and look at the macro you have
just recorded. What you see will be VBA code (Visual Basic
for Applications), but that is easy enough to convert to
vbScript.

cheers, jw
____________________________________________________________

You got questions? WE GOT ANSWERS!!! ..(but, no guarantee
the answers will be applicable to the questions)

"James Watkins" <james@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23FyA8VxcJHA.5904@xxxxxxMost of the FileSystemObject is documented here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scr..._scr_xfxi.mspx

For example, to bind to a specific Drive object:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scr..._scr_ltuf.mspx

You need an object browser or documentation of the Object Model for Excel
properties and methods.

--
Richard Mueller
MVP Directory Services
Hilltop Lab - http://www.rlmueller.net
--

Hi James,

If you haven't tried it already, step through the code using a
VBScript Editor.

I'm familiar with vbsedit.

It lets you set break points - and in a separate pane displays active
variables.

You can click into variables and peruse collection members and see
available Subs and Functions.

Regarding the oFind object that you asked about - you might get a grip
on its contents, then you might not.

vbsedit can't format or figure out everything.

Your question is not really a VBScript question. It's a VBA question
and you could post at microsoft.public.excel.programming and ask
there.

Selections are pretty common - so don't be surprised if you get a few
useless responses because it's obvious you don't have a clue about
VBA. (I'm just saying - no offense meant.)

I'm guessing the result is an a selected range having the name
"unassigned".

If you know for a fact that something is in that selection
experimenting with :

t = oFind.Cell(1,1).value
t = oFind.Cells(1,1).value
t = oFind.ActiveOffset(0,0).value

One of these should work - *if* the selection has data. But YMMV.


On Jan 10, 3:20*am, "James Watkins" <ja...@xxxxxx> wrote:

"James Watkins" <james@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:#FyA8VxcJHA.5904@xxxxxxHowexample,Thank you all for your helpful comments.

"James Watkins" <james@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23FyA8VxcJHA.5904@xxxxxxCollections are not all the same. How they are created can determine how
they can be used. For example, you can only enumerate some collections with
a 'for each' statement once; to go through the list again you have to get a
new collection. Other collections can be enumerated multiple times. When
you create collections with WMI queries, you can specify which type of
collection you want.

Rather than just blindly googling for info on the object you are interested
in, you might want to do a more focused search. For most things Microsoft,
try going to msdn.microsoft.com and do your search there. For scriptable
objects, adding the two words 'object model' to things like ado or excel or
word or access or dhtml or internet explorer will likely get you a shorter
focused list of things to look at. The file system object is pretty well
documented in the scripting help file, script56.chm.

-Paul Randall