VBS Run cmd.exe output to a variable; not text file

Question

This is what I have so far. It works; outputing the folder path to temp to a text file. What I really want, is to output the data to a variable. Every example I see online

Answer 1

Of course Wscript.Shell would be a lot easier, but, since you want more fine grain control of your session, consider using Win32_Process. Usually, one uses this to control the placement of a new window, but, in your case, you want it hidden, so I set startupInfo.ShowWindow = 0 which means SW_HIDE. The following declares a VBScript function called RunCmd and which will run a command in an invisible window saving the output to a text file and then return the contents of the text file to the caller. As an example, I invoke RunCmd with the HOSTNAME command:

Function RunCmd(strCmd)
  Dim wmiService
  Set wmiService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\cimv2")
  Dim startupInfo
  Set startupInfo = wmiService.Get("Win32_ProcessStartup")
  Dim fso
  Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
  Dim cwd
  cwd = fso.GetAbsolutePathname(".")
  startupInfo.SpawnInstance_
  startupInfo.ShowWindow = 0
  ' startupInfo.X = 50
  ' startupInfo.y = 50
  ' startupInfo.XSize = 150
  ' startupInfo.YSize = 50
  ' startupInfo.Title = "Hello"
  ' startupInfo.XCountChars = 36
  ' startupInfo.YCountChars = 1
  Dim objNewProcess
  Set objNewProcess = wmiService.Get("Win32_Process")
  Dim intPID
  Dim errRtn
  errRtn = objNewProcess.Create("cmd.exe /c """ & strCmd & """ > out.txt", cwd, startupInfo, intPID)
  Dim f
  Set f = fso.OpenTextFile("out.txt", 1)
  RunCmd = f.ReadAll
  f.Close
End Function

MsgBox RunCmd("HOSTNAME")

References:

• Create method of the Win32_Process class
• Win32_ProcessStartup class