Python win32com.client Dispatch and Create Shorcut Methods

Question

I want to ask few questions about win32com.client .

1. What does DisPatch do? It returns COMObject wscript.shell . What exactly is this?

    shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("wscript.shell") 

2. And why do we use it while creating shortcut.

    shortcutcut = shell.CreateShortcut('shortcut.lnk') 

Answer 1

win32com.client.Dispatch creates a ActiveX/COM object. The argument is the so-called program ID. Another example of program ID is "Excel.Application" which would be used to create an instance of Excel. In your case you are creating a wscript.shell object.

The program ID is mapped to a DLL on the system by the registry. The object is instantiated through a number of well-known export methods.

Apparently, one of the methods of a wscript.shell object is CreateShortcut. Why you are using a wscript.shell to do this, I can't say.