Problem Statement

Load the entire contents of some text file as a single string variable. If applicable, discuss: encoding selection, the possibility of memory-mapping. Of course, in practice one should avoid reading an entire file at once if the file is large and the task can be accomplished incrementally instead (in which case check File IO); this is for those cases where having the entire file is actually what is wanted.

Let's start with the solution:

dim s
s = createobject("scripting.filesystemobject").opentextfile("slurp.vbs",1).readall
wscript.echo s

wscript.echo createobject("scripting.filesystemobject").opentextfile("utf16encoded.txt",1,-1).readall