Counting blank text box as 0 value While Text Boxes are Empty - vb.net

Question

I am have written the following code:
Dim i As Integer
Dim pos As Integer = 0
Dim neg As Integer = 0
Dim zer As Integer = 0
Dim TextBoxes() As String = {Val(TextBox1.Text), Val(TextBox2.Text),
Val(TextBox3.Text), Val(TextBox4.Text),
Val(TextBox5.Text), Val(TextBox6.Text),
Val(TextBox7.Text), Val(TextBox8.Text),
Val(TextBox9.Text), Val(TextBox10.Text)}
For i = 0 To 9
If TextBoxes(i) > 0 Then
pos += 1
End If
If TextBoxes(i) < 0 Then
neg += 1
End If
If TextBoxes(i) = 0 Then
zer += 1
End If
Next i
Label4.Text = (pos)
Label5.Text = (neg)
Label6.Text = (zer)
When the program executes and I put some values into the text boxes, the output looks like this. The first text box contains 1 which is positive and the other one contains -1 which is negative. It's working well.
The problem occurs here: the program is counting the empty boxes as 0 and displaying 8 in the total number of zeros. All of the other 8 text boxes were left blank. How can I Fix the issue so that it doesn't count the empty text boxes as 0.
For reference, here is my related, previous problem which has already been solved: Finding String of Substring in VB without using library function

Answer 1

The problem is that you are calling the Val function to get the value in each text box. Val returns 0 if the given text is empty or non-numeric. If you want to check that, you should just store the original strings in the array and then check the value in the loop, like this:
Dim i As Integer
Dim pos As Integer = 0
Dim neg As Integer = 0
Dim zer As Integer = 0
Dim TextBoxes() As String = {TextBox1.Text, TextBox2.Text,
TextBox3.Text, TextBox4.Text,
TextBox5.Text, TextBox6.Text,
TextBox7.Text, TextBox8.Text,
TextBox9.Text, TextBox10.Text}
For i = 0 To 9
If TextBoxes(i) <> String.Empty Then
If Val(TextBoxes(i)) > 0 Then
pos += 1
End If
If Val(TextBoxes(i)) < 0 Then
neg += 1
End If
If Val(TextBoxes(i)) = 0 Then
zer += 1
End If
End If
Next i
Label4.Text = pos.ToString()
Label5.Text = neg.ToString()
Label6.Text = zer.ToString()
However, the Val function is mainly just provided for backwards compatibility with VB6. It will work, but I would recommend using Integer.TryParse instead. Note that I also added ToString to the last three lines. As others have mentioned, it would behoove you to turn Option Strict On.