I recently poked around Google for a little bit, looking for information about coding JScript. It's very sparse, which surprised me -- it took a link to a link to find Microsoft's own reference, which appears to omit most if not all references to console-based scripting that extends past Javascript. I'm working with the console here, not a webpage, so input and output seems very different than what Microsoft explains.

If JScript is dying (and it appears to be so), where do I go from here? VBScript? My options are limited because the computers I'm using this on are carefully patrolled for new software. JScript's similarity to JavaScript was the biggest reason I had chosen it for porting over some of my prior work.

I'm specifically looking for, at best, a console scripting language that doesn't need any extra software on Windows XP or higher, that at least supports standard input, output, pause, and file manipulation, little else.