I have a large string (more than 255 char) called strBlockText. This string includes random text and block numbers. The block numbers should to be in the format ###Block####-## (IE: 245Block6533-56) but sometimes someone enters the wrong block number format in the text - for example ##Block####-## or ###Block###-## or ##Block###-##...etc.
**Note, this is for plain text only.
I want to write a function that will be able to state, "Wrong block number format identified." when the block number is fat fingered.
This is the text I'm using as a sample:
This is a Test that we need to figure out why this isn’t working.
24Block1234-23 This is a Test that we need to figure out why this
isn’t working. 245Block4234-14 This is a Test that we need to figure
out why this isn’t working. This is a Test that 245Block6533-56 we
need to figure out why this isn’t working.
This is the code...that I feel should work but isn't:
Dim strBlockText As String
Dim strBlockCheck As String
If (((strBlockText Like "*##Block####-##*") or _
(strBlockText Like "*###Block###-##*") or _
(strBlockText Like "*##Block###-##*")) And _
(Not strBlockText Like "*###Block####-##*")) Then
strBlockCheck = "Wrong block number format identified."
Else
strBlockCheck = "Block number format acceptable."
End If
Would it be better to use a regex for this instead of like?...is there a reason like isn't working?
Consider this Sub using RegExp object with late binding:
Sub testRegExp2(strS)
Dim regexOne As Object, Matches As Object, Match As Object
'Set regexOne = New RegExp
Set regexOne = CreateObject("VBScript.RegExp")
regexOne.Pattern = "[0-9]+Block[0-9]+-[0-9]+"
regexOne.Global = True
Set Matches = regexOne.Execute(strS)
For Each Match In Matches
If Not Match Like "###Block####-##" Then
Debug.Print "Wrong block number format identified: " & Match
Else
Debug.Print "Block number format acceptable: " & Match
End If
Next
End Sub
I was chastised by a professional developer with a lot of years of experience for Hard Coding my DB name
OK I get it we sometimes carry our bad codding habits with us till we learn the correct way to code
I have finally learned to use Interpolated Strings (personal view they are not pretty)
My Question involves the two Sub's posted below GetDB runs first then HowMany is called from GetDB
Sorry for stating the obvious my reason is I think that NewWord.db gets declared in GetDB and works in HowMany without the same construction Just a Wild Guess
Notice NO $ or quotation used in HowMany
Both Sub's produce desired results
The question is Why don't both statements need to be constructed the same?
Public Sub HowMany()
'Dim dbName As String = "NewWord.db"
Dim conn As New SQLiteConnection("Data Source ='{NewWord.db}';Version=3;")
tot = dgvOne.RowCount ' - 1
tbMessage.Text = "DGV has " & tot.ToString & " Rows"
End Sub
Private Sub GetDB()
Dim str2 As String
Dim s1 As Integer
'Dim dbName As String = "NewWord.db"
Using conn As New SQLiteConnection($"Data Source = '{"NewWord.db"}' ;Version=3;")
conn.Open()
That second method is a ridiculous and pointless use of string interpolation. What could possibly be the point of inserting a literal String into a literal String? The whole point is that you can insert values determined at run time. That second code is equivalent to using:
"Data Source = '" & "NewWord.db" & "' ;Version=3;"
What's the point of that? The idea is that you retrieve your database name from somewhere at run time, e.g. your config file, and then insert that into the template String, e.g.
Dim dbName = GetDbNameFromExternalFile()
Using conn As New SQLiteConnection($"Data Source = '{dbName}' ;Version=3;")
Now the user can edit that external file to change the database name after deploying the application. How could they change the name in your code?
To be clear, string interpolation is just native language support for the String.Format method. You can see that if you make a mistake that generates an exception and the that exception will refer to the String.Format method. In turn, String.Format is a way to make code that multiple values into a long template easier to read than if multiple concatenation operators were used.
Having lots of quotes and ampersands makes code hard to read and error-prone. I've lost count of the number of times people miss a single quote or a space or the like in a String because they couldn't read there messy code. Personally, I'll rarely use two concatenation operators in the same expression and never three. I'll do this:
Dim str = "some text" & someVar
but I'll rarely do this:
Dim str = "some text" & someVar & "some more text"
and I'll never do this:
Dim str = "some text" & someVar & "some more text" & someOtherVar
Before string interpolation, I would use String.Format:
Dim str = String.Format("some text{0}some more text{1}", someVar, someOtherVar)
Nowadays, I'll generally use string interpolation:
Dim str = $"some text{someVar}some more text{someOtherVar}"
Where I may still use String.Format over string interpolation is if one value is getting inserted in multiple places and/or where the text template and/or the expressions are long so that I can break the whole thing over multiple lines, e.g.
Dim str = String.Format("some text{0}some more text{1}yet more text{0}",
someVar,
someOtherVar)
I have no idea what NewWord.db is so I made a class to represent it.
Public Class NewWord
Public Shared Property db As String = "The db Name"
End Class
HowMany is not a very good name for your sub. Try to use more descriptive names.
The first sub doesn't even use the connection. The connection string in that code is a literal string. It will not consider NewWord.db as a variable. You will not notice this because you never attempt to open the connection. In my version you check the connection string with a Debug.Print.
I changed the last line to use and interpolated string. It is not necessary to call .ToString on tot.
Private Sub DisplayGridCount()
Dim conn As New SQLiteConnection("Data Source ='{NewWord.db}';Version=3;")
Debug.Print(conn.ConnectionString)
Dim tot = DataGridView1.RowCount
TextBox1.Text = $"DGV has {tot} Rows"
End Sub
The second snippet starts off with 2 unused variables. I deleted them. Again, the Debug.Print to show the difference in the 2 strings.
Private Sub TestConnection()
Using conn As New SQLiteConnection($"Data Source = '{NewWord.db}' ;Version=3;")
Debug.Print(conn.ConnectionString)
'conn.Open()
End Using
End Sub
As to where to store connection strings see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/data/adonet/protecting-connection-information and Where to store Connection String
I'm writing an application in which I have to pass strings as parameters. Like these:
GetValue("InternetGatewayDevice.DeviceInfo.Description")
GetValue("InternetGatewayDevice.DeviceInfo.HardwareVersion")
CheckValue("InternetGatewayDevice.DeviceInfo.Manufacturer")
ScrambleValue("InternetGatewayDevice.DeviceInfo.ModelName")
DeleteValue("InternetGatewayDevice.DeviceInfo.ProcessStatus.Process.1")
The full list is about 10500 entries, and i tought that i'd be really lost in searching if i misspell something.
So I am trying to declare a namespace for every string segment (separated by ".") and declare the last as a simple class that widens to a String of its FullName (except the base app namespace):
Class xconv
Public Shared Widening Operator CType(ByVal d As xconv) As String
Dim a As String = d.GetType.FullName
Dim b As New List(Of String)(Strings.Split(a, "."))
Dim c As String = Strings.Join(b.Skip(1).ToArray, ".")
Return c
End Operator
End Class
So I'd have these declarations:
Namespace InternetGatewayDevice
Namespace DeviceInfo
Class Description
Inherits xconv
End Class
End Namespace
End Namespace
This way IntelliSense is more than happy to autocomplete that string for me.
Now I'd have to do this for every possible string, so I opted (in order to retain my sanity) to make a method that does that:
Sub Create_Autocomlete_List()
Dim pathlist As New List(Of String)(IO.File.ReadAllLines("D:\list.txt"))
Dim def_list As New List(Of String)
Dim thedoc As String = ""
For Each kl As String In pathlist
Dim locdoc As String = ""
Dim el() As String = Strings.Split(kl, ".")
Dim elc As Integer = el.Length - 1
Dim elz As Integer = -1
Dim cdoc As String
For Each ol As String In el
elz += 1
If elz = elc Then
locdoc += "Class " + ol + vbCrLf + _
"Inherits xconv" + vbCrLf + _
"End Class"
Else
locdoc += "Namespace " + ol + vbCrLf
cdoc += vbCrLf + "End Namespace"
End If
Next
locdoc += cdoc
thedoc += locdoc + vbCrLf + vbCrLf
Next
IO.File.WriteAllText("D:\start_list_dot_net.txt", thedoc)
End Sub
The real problem is that this is HORRIBLY SLOW and memory-intense (now i dot a OutOfMemory Exception), and I have no idea on how Intellisense would perform with the (not available in the near future) output of the Create_Autocomlete_List() sub.
I believe that it would be very slow.
So the real questions are: Am I doing this right? Is there any better way to map a list of strings to auto-completable strings? Is there any "standard" way to do this?
What would you do in this case?
I don't know how Visual Studio is going to perform with thousands of classes, but your Create_Autocomlete_List method can be optimized to minimize memory usage by not storing everything in memory as you build the source code. This should also speed things up considerably.
It can also be simplified, since nested namespaces can be declared on one line, e.g. Namespace First.Second.Third.
Sub Create_Autocomlete_List()
Using output As StreamWriter = IO.File.CreateText("D:\start_list_dot_net.txt")
For Each line As String In IO.File.ReadLines("D:\list.txt")
Dim lastDotPos As Integer = line.LastIndexOf("."c)
Dim nsName As String = line.Substring(0, lastDotPos)
Dim clsName As String = line.Substring(lastDotPos + 1)
output.Write("Namespace ")
output.WriteLine(nsName)
output.Write(" Class ")
output.WriteLine(clsName)
output.WriteLine(" Inherits xconv")
output.WriteLine(" End Class")
output.WriteLine("End Namespace")
output.WriteLine()
Next
End Using
End Sub
Note the use of File.ReadLines instead of File.ReadAllLines, which returns an IEnumerable instead of an array. Also note that the output is written directly to the file, instead of being built in memory.
Note Based on your sample data, you may run into issues where the last node is not a valid class name. e.g. InternetGatewayDevice.DeviceInfo.ProcessStatus.Process.1 - 1 is not a valid class name in VB.NET. You will need to devise some mechanism to deal with this - maybe some unique prefix that you could strip in your widening operator.
I'm also not sure how usable the resulting classes will be, since presumably you would need to pass an instance to the methods:
GetValue(New InternetGatewayDevice.DeviceInfo.Description())
It seems like it would be nicer to have Shared strings on a class:
Namespace InternetGatewayDevice
Class DeviceInfo
Public Shared Description As String = "Description"
Public Shared HardwareVersion As String = "HardwareVersion"
' etc.
End Class
End Namespace
So you could just reference those strings:
GetValue(InternetGatewayDevice.DeviceInfo.Description)
However, I think that would be a lot harder to generate without creating name clashes due to the various levels of nesting.
I am having trouble turning a set of data from a .txt file into arrays, basically, what i have in the text file is:
Eddy vbtab 20
Andy vbtab 30
James vbtab 20
etc..
I want to set up the names as a Names array, and numbers as number array.
Now what I have done is
strFilename = "CustomerPrices.txt"
If File.Exists(strFilename) Then
Dim srReader As New StreamReader(strFilename)
intRecords = srReader.ReadLine()
intRows = intRecords
For i = 0 To intRows - 1
intLastBlank = strInput.IndexOf(vbTab)
strName(intPrices) = strInput.Substring(0, intLastBlank)
dblPrices(intPrices) = Double.Parse(strInput.Substring(intLastBlank + 1))
But when I debug I get a problem "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object"
Can anyone give me some advise?
Thanks
Separate arrays are probably a bad idea here. They group your data by fields, when it's almost always better to group your data by records. What you want instead is a single collection filled with classes of a particular type. Go for something like this:
Public Class CustomerPrice
Public Property Name As String
Public Property Price As Decimal
End Class
Public Function ReadCustomerPrices(ByVal fileName As String) As List(Of CustomerPrice)
Dim result As New List(Of CustomerPrice)()
Using srReader As New StreamReader(fileName)
Dim line As String
While (line = srReader.ReadLine()) <> Nothing
Dim data() As String = line.Split(vbTab)
result.Add(new CustomerPrice() From {Name = data(0), Price = Decimal.Parse(data(1))})
End While
End Using
Return result
End Function
Some other things worth noting in this code:
The Using block will guarantee the file is closed, even if an exception is thrown
It's almost never appropriate to check File.Exists(). It's wasteful code, because you still have to be able to handle the file io exceptions.
When working with money, you pretty much always want to use the Decimal type rather than Double
This code requires Visual Studio 2010 / .Net 4, and was typed directly into the reply window and so likely contains a bug, or even base syntax error.
Locked. This question and its answers are locked because the question is off-topic but has historical significance. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
Which features of the VBA language are either poorly documented, or simply not often used?
This trick only works in Access VBA, Excel and others won't allow it. But you can make a Standard Module hidden from the object browser by prefixing the Module name with an underscore. The module will then only be visible if you change the object browser to show hidden objects.
This trick works with Enums in all vb6 based version of VBA. You can create a hidden member of an Enum by encasing it's name in brackets, then prefixing it with an underscore. Example:
Public Enum MyEnum
meDefault = 0
meThing1 = 1
meThing2 = 2
meThing3 = 3
[_Min] = meDefault
[_Max] = meThing3
End Enum
Public Function IsValidOption(ByVal myOption As MyEnum) As Boolean
If myOption >= MyEnum.[_Min] Then IsValidOption myOption <= MyEnum.[_Max]
End Function
In Excel-VBA you can reference cells by enclosing them in brackets, the brackets also function as an evaluate command allowing you to evaluate formula syntax:
Public Sub Example()
[A1] = "Foo"
MsgBox [VLOOKUP(A1,A1,1,0)]
End Sub
Also you can pass around raw data without using MemCopy (RtlMoveMemory) by combining LSet with User Defined Types of the same size:
Public Sub Example()
Dim b() As Byte
b = LongToByteArray(8675309)
MsgBox b(1)
End Sub
Private Function LongToByteArray(ByVal value As Long) As Byte()
Dim tl As TypedLong
Dim bl As ByteLong
tl.value = value
LSet bl = tl
LongToByteArray = bl.value
End Function
Octal & Hex Literals are actually unsigned types, these will both output -32768:
Public Sub Example()
Debug.Print &H8000
Debug.Print &O100000
End Sub
As mentioned, passing a variable inside parenthesis causes it to be passed ByVal:
Sub PredictTheOutput()
Dim i&, j&, k&
i = 10: j = i: k = i
MySub (i)
MySub j
MySub k + 20
MsgBox Join(Array(i, j, k), vbNewLine), vbQuestion, "Did You Get It Right?"
End Sub
Public Sub MySub(ByRef foo As Long)
foo = 5
End Sub
You can assign a string directly into a byte array and vice-versa:
Public Sub Example()
Dim myString As String
Dim myBytArr() As Byte
myBytArr = "I am a string."
myString = myBytArr
MsgBox myString
End Sub
"Mid" is also an operator. Using it you overwrite specific portions of strings without VBA's notoriously slow string concatenation:
Public Sub Example1()
''// This takes about 47% of time Example2 does:
Dim myString As String
myString = "I liek pie."
Mid(myString, 5, 2) = "ke"
Mid(myString, 11, 1) = "!"
MsgBox myString
End Sub
Public Sub Example2()
Dim myString As String
myString = "I liek pie."
myString = "I li" & "ke" & " pie" & "!"
MsgBox myString
End Sub
There is an important but almost always missed feature of the Mid() statement. That is where Mid() appears on the left hand side of an assignment as opposed to the Mid() function that appears in the right hand side or in an expression.
The rule is that if the if the target string is not a string literal, and this is the only reference to the target string, and the length of segment being inserted matches the length of the segment being replaced, then the string will be treated as mutable for the operation.
What does that mean? It means that if your building up a large report or a huge list of strings into a single string value, then exploiting this will make your string processing much faster.
Here is a simple class that benefits from this. It gives your VBA the same StringBuilder capability that .Net has.
' Class: StringBuilder
Option Explicit
Private Const initialLength As Long = 32
Private totalLength As Long ' Length of the buffer
Private curLength As Long ' Length of the string value within the buffer
Private buffer As String ' The buffer
Private Sub Class_Initialize()
' We set the buffer up to it's initial size and the string value ""
totalLength = initialLength
buffer = Space(totalLength)
curLength = 0
End Sub
Public Sub Append(Text As String)
Dim incLen As Long ' The length that the value will be increased by
Dim newLen As Long ' The length of the value after being appended
incLen = Len(Text)
newLen = curLength + incLen
' Will the new value fit in the remaining free space within the current buffer
If newLen <= totalLength Then
' Buffer has room so just insert the new value
Mid(buffer, curLength + 1, incLen) = Text
Else
' Buffer does not have enough room so
' first calculate the new buffer size by doubling until its big enough
' then build the new buffer
While totalLength < newLen
totalLength = totalLength + totalLength
Wend
buffer = Left(buffer, curLength) & Text & Space(totalLength - newLen)
End If
curLength = newLen
End Sub
Public Property Get Length() As Integer
Length = curLength
End Property
Public Property Get Text() As String
Text = Left(buffer, curLength)
End Property
Public Sub Clear()
totalLength = initialLength
buffer = Space(totalLength)
curLength = 0
End Sub
And here is an example on how to use it:
Dim i As Long
Dim sb As StringBuilder
Dim result As String
Set sb = New StringBuilder
For i = 1 to 100000
sb.Append CStr( i)
Next i
result = sb.Text
VBA itself seems to be a hidden feature. Folks I know who've used Office products for years have no idea it's even a part of the suite.
I've posted this on multiple questions here, but the Object Browser is my secret weapon. If I need to ninja code something real quick, but am not familiar with the dll's, Object Browser saves my life. It makes it much easier to learn the class structures than MSDN.
The Locals Window is great for debugging as well. Put a pause in your code and it will show you all the variables, their names, and their current values and types within the current namespace.
And who could forget our good friend Immediate Window? Not only is it great for Debug.Print standard output, but you can enter in commands into it as well. Need to know what VariableX is?
?VariableX
Need to know what color that cell is?
?Application.ActiveCell.Interior.Color
In fact all those windows are great tools to be productive with VBA.
It's not a feature, but a thing I have seen wrong so many times in VBA (and VB6): Parenthesis added on method calls where it will change semantics:
Sub Foo()
Dim str As String
str = "Hello"
Bar (str)
Debug.Print str 'prints "Hello" because str is evaluated and a copy is passed
Bar str 'or Call Bar(str)
Debug.Print str 'prints "Hello World"
End Sub
Sub Bar(ByRef param As String)
param = param + " World"
End Sub
Hidden Features
Although it is "Basic", you can use OOP - classes and objects
You can make API calls
Possibly the least documented features in VBA are those you can only expose by selecting "Show Hidden Members" on the VBA Object Browser. Hidden members are those functions that are in VBA, but are unsupported. You can use them, but microsoft might eliminate them at any time. None of them has any documentation provided, but you can find some on the web. Possibly the most talked about of these hidden features provides access to pointers in VBA. For a decent writeup, check out; Not So Lightweight - Shlwapi.dll
Documented, but perhaps more obscure (in excel anyways) is using ExecuteExcel4Macro to access a hidden global namespace that belongs to the entire Excel application instance as opposed to a specific workbook.
You can implement interfaces with the Implements keyword.
Dictionaries. VBA is practically worthless without them!
Reference the Microsoft Scripting Runtime, use Scripting.Dictionary for any sufficiently complicated task, and live happily ever after.
The Scripting Runtime also gives you the FileSystemObject, which also comes highly recommended.
Start here, then dig around a bit...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa164509%28office.10%29.aspx
Typing VBA. will bring up an intellisense listing of all the built-in functions and constants.
With a little work, you can iterate over custom collections like this:
' Write some text in Word first.'
Sub test()
Dim c As New clsMyCollection
c.AddItems ActiveDocument.Characters(1), _
ActiveDocument.Characters(2), _
ActiveDocument.Characters(3), _
ActiveDocument.Characters(4)
Dim el As Range
For Each el In c
Debug.Print el.Text
Next
Set c = Nothing
End Sub
Your custom collection code (in a class called clsMyCollection):
Option Explicit
Dim m_myCollection As Collection
Public Property Get NewEnum() As IUnknown
' This property allows you to enumerate
' this collection with the For...Each syntax
' Put the following line in the exported module
' file (.cls)!'
'Attribute NewEnum.VB_UserMemId = -4
Set NewEnum = m_myCollection.[_NewEnum]
End Property
Public Sub AddItems(ParamArray items() As Variant)
Dim i As Variant
On Error Resume Next
For Each i In items
m_myCollection.Add i
Next
On Error GoTo 0
End Sub
Private Sub Class_Initialize()
Set m_myCollection = New Collection
End Sub
Save 4 whole keystrokes by typing debug.? xxx instead of debug.print xxx.
Crash it by adding: enum foo: me=0: end enum to the top of a module containing any other code.
Support for localized versions, which (at least in the previous century) supported expressions using localized values. Like Pravda for True and Fałszywy (not too sure, but at least it did have the funny L) for False in Polish... Actually the English version would be able to read macros in any language, and convert on the fly. Other localized versions would not handle that though.
FAIL.
The VBE (Visual Basic Extensibility) object model is a lesser known and/or under-utilized feature. It lets you write VBA code to manipulate VBA code, modules and projects. I once wrote an Excel project that would assemble other Excel projects from a group of module files.
The object model also works from VBScript and HTAs. I wrote an HTA at one time to help me keep track of a large number of Word, Excel and Access projects. Many of the projects would use common code modules, and it was easy for modules to "grow" in one system and then need to be migrated to other systems. My HTA would allow me to export all modules in a project, compare them to versions in a common folder and merge updated routines (using BeyondCompare), then reimport the updated modules.
The VBE object model works slightly differently between Word, Excel and Access, and unfortunately doesn't work with Outlook at all, but still provides a great capability for managing code.
IsDate("13.50") returns True but IsDate("12.25.2010") returns False
This is because IsDate could be more precisely named IsDateTime. And because the period (.) is treated as a time separator and not a date separator. See here for a full explanation.
VBA supports bitwise operators for comparing the binary digits (bits) of two values. For example, the expression 4 And 7 evaluates the bit values of 4 (0100) and 7 (0111) and returns 4 (the bit that is on in both numbers.) Similarly the expression 4 Or 8 evaluates the bit values in 4 (0100) and 8 (1000) and returns 12 (1100), i.e. the bits where either one is true.
Unfortunately, the bitwise operators have the same names at the logical comparison operators: And, Eqv, Imp, Not, Or, and Xor. This can lead to ambiguities, and even contradictory results.
As an example, open the Immediate Window (Ctrl+G) and enter:
? (2 And 4)
This returns zero, since there are no bits in common between 2 (0010) and 4 (0100).
Deftype Statements
This feature exists presumably for backwards-compatibility. Or to write hopelessly obfuscated spaghetti code. Your pick.