Chapter 3. Working with Answer Files

As you continue developing the Windows server scanning script, you may run into scenarios where you need to modify your script to run in different environments. While it's fairly low risk to modify code in a one or two-line script, large enterprise scripts require a better structure and process. The general rule of thumb is that if you need to adjust values in your script for different scenarios, you should put those values into an answer file. The contents of the answer file are read during runtime, and those values are used as input into the script. This provides another layer of stability to your scripts because you're not adding risk by modifying code in the script itself.

There are many different formats for answer files. The industry standard with .NET programs are XML-based answer files. This is due to their ability to have file format integrity built into the standards for XML. If the answer file is not formatted properly,...