'Batch Files' and windows and the internet

Every evening I spend quite a lot of time downloading text and graph files
from a variety of www sites. These I save on disk with names which reflect
the date and, of course, which file they are.

It would be ever so convenient if I could have a batch file, taking the date
a parameter, to do this automagically. In the days of DOS, I would never
have dreamt of going though all this labour every day :-)

I wonder if anyone can advise me how to do this, or at least point me in the
direction of the least 'difficult' ( and cheap)language to learn by which it
might be done. I might have thought that someone would have created a
simulation of DOS batch files interpretation, but I have not located such a
thing.

Thanks in advance.

--
Gordon

Hello,

I think Windows Scripting Host would help you. It allows to execute scripts
written in VBScript and JScript (in addition to DOS scripting language). You
could schedule your script execution for a specific time-of-day, for
example.
To learn more on Windows Scripting Host just do search for WSH from Windows
help menu (I'm using Win2000).
If you download files via FTP, you could use DOS scripts. If you want to
download via browser, you might want to investigate how to use IE ActiveX
control from VBScript or JScript. There are also some 3rd party scripting
languages supported by WSH: Perl one of them (but I'm not sure they it's
free).

Boris
"gordon" <spamdotkiller@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:bo0rfd$15o926$1@ID-12474.news.uni-berlin.de...[color=blue]
> Every evening I spend quite a lot of time downloading text and graph files
> from a variety of www sites. These I save on disk with names which[/color]
reflect[color=blue]
> the date and, of course, which file they are.
>
> It would be ever so convenient if I could have a batch file, taking the[/color]
date[color=blue]
> a parameter, to do this automagically. In the days of DOS, I would never
> have dreamt of going though all this labour every day :-)
>
> I wonder if anyone can advise me how to do this, or at least point me in[/color]
the[color=blue]
> direction of the least 'difficult' ( and cheap)language to learn by which[/color]
it[color=blue]
> might be done. I might have thought that someone would have created a
> simulation of DOS batch files interpretation, but I have not located such[/color]
a[color=blue]
> thing.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> --
> Gordon
>
>
>
>[/color]