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About AutoShell

AutoShell is a combination of a scripting language and a command line shell. It is based on the standardized scripting language ECMA-Script, most commonly referred to as JavaScript. While JavaScript is mostly known as a scripting language that is used on web pages, it does not need to run in a browser. It is a standalone scripting language implementing support for object orientation, XML and regular expression processing. AutoShell uses an out-of-the-box version of the Mozilla Spidermonkey JavaScript interpreter which also provides JavaScript functionality to the Mozilla Firefox web browser. This allows you to use JavaScript syntax directly in the AutoShell, for example, for displaying a directory listing.

Typically, strings must be surrounded by quotes, special characters must be escaped, or function calls must be enclosed in parentheses. Entering instructions in this manner is not efficient, so AutoShell implements a unique command translation layer on top of the JavaScript language that accepts typical shell-type commands with mandatory and optional arguments. These commands do not require strings to be placed in quotes and translated into the underlying JavaScript syntax.

Key AutoShell features include the following:

• Operating system access to run child processes and capture their output.
• Parallel remote script execution to permit efficient processing of tasks that cannot be run centrally.
• Remote file system access for advanced provisioning by copying files directly between computers.
• Support for common Application Programming Interface (API) mechanisms typically used by management APIs, such as library calls, Java, and COM, to permit access from scripts to these APIs.
• Remote registry access (Windows specific).
• Ability to push and install its own client shell and arbitrary install packages to remote Windows systems.

Note: For information about JavaScript language references and examples, see the website https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript. AutoShell uses JavaScript version 1.7.

More Information

Invoking AutoShell

Stringification

AutoShell Core Reference

Manager Shell and Client Shell

Running Scripts