More About How to Assign Network Resources

In "Connecting to Printers," August 2002, http://www.winnetmag.com, InstantDoc ID 25652, and "Connecting Users to Network Resources," June 2002, http://www.winnetmag.com, InstantDoc ID 24893, I explained how to assign network printers and shares to users based on computer names and usernames. In response to these articles, readers sent email messages that asked whether they could make such assignments for more than one user or computer at a time. You can, but it requires a little more work than making selections based on individual names. Let's look at how you can assign network resources to computers with similar names and to users based on their group memberships.

Assigning Resources to Similarly Named Computers
After reading "Connecting to Printers," a reader contacted me with this question: "Suppose that I have 20 Windows 2000 PCs (named Gamma1, Gamma2 ... Gamma20) that I need to set to printer1. Can I use a Select Case statement and test for Case "Gamma*" to access those PCs?" If you used the Select Case statement as you've described, VBScript would try to match the string Gamma* with the exact value Gamma*—in other words, the only matches would be for computers named Gamma*. The wildcard character that you're accustomed to using in searches or from the command line won't work without VBScript's RegExp object, which I haven't discussed yet in a Scripting Solutions column. However, if you've named computers based on a naming scheme organized according to computer location, function, or some other rule, you can look for matches based on the common root of those names.

For example, suppose that your company has workstations set up in the lab, library, and reception area, and you've named these workstations according to their location. The lab workstations have names that start with the prefix LAB, the library workstations have names that start with LIBR, and the reception area workstations have names that start with REC. All the workstation names end with two-digit numbers, so the workstation names look something like LAB01, LIBR19, and RECP03.

Listing 1 shows SetPrinter.vbs, a script that sets the default printers for these three groups of workstations. SetPrinter.vbs starts by defining the variables and creating the oNetwork object to represent a WshNetwork object. Next, the script uses the Left function to capture a three-character prefix from each workstation name, then assigns that prefix to a variable.

VBScript's Left and Right functions count the number of characters in a string and return the number of characters you specify. The Left function returns the specified number of characters from the left side of the string, whereas the Right function returns the specified number of characters from the right side of the string. The syntax of both functions is simple: They take as arguments the string on which to operate and the number of characters to return. So, for example, if you type

Left("gorilla", 2)

the Left function returns the value go. If you type

Right("gorilla", 5)

the Right function returns the value rilla.

The first argument of the Left or Right function doesn't have to be a literal string; you can instead use code that returns a string at runtime. As the code at callout A in Listing 1 shows, SetPrinter.vbs uses the WshNetwork object's computerName property to obtain the computer's name at runtime. The Left function then captures the first three letters of the computer's name and assigns them to the string variable called sShort. As this script illustrates, the number of characters in sShort doesn't need to be the same as the number of characters in the prefix that you're using in the computers' names. As long as the characters in sShort uniquely identify a particular group of computers, the script will work.

Finally, SetPrinter.vbs uses the Select Case statement to compare the characters in sShort with the strings Lib, Lab, and Rec. When sShort matches one of those strings, the script assigns the appropriate printer path to the sPrintPath variable. SetPrinter.vbs then uses the sPrintPath variable with the WshNetwork object's AddWindowsPrinterConnection and SetDefaultPrinter methods to add a printer connection and assign the default printer, respectively.

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