Something funny about constants

I have a program where I define:

Dim strMyLetter as String
Dim strTheChar as String
strTheChar = Chr(5) ' never changes

If strMyLetter = strTheChar Then....... works fine

Since I do big loop of character checking I thought I could changeout strTheChar instead to a constant & gain some program speed:

Const strTheChar as String = &H5

If strMyLetter = strTheChar Then....... now does not seem to work ?????

Is the "&H5" proper, or is something else going wrong?

Code:

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Const strTheChar as String = &H5

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That doesn't work because &H implies a Hexidecimal number

Code:

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Const strTheChar as String = "5"

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Actually it would need to be .... as string=Chr(5) but this is not supported in VB6 so you must do it with a var as in the original snippet

oops. missed that one.

EDIT: Although in this case they are both strings, and &H5 = "5" anyways. Chr$(47) (or whatever letter that is) works

Yes, that's true. You can assign any expression consisting of other constants to a constant, but the result of a simple function which surely is meant to be constant is denied.
There is no workaround known to me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dglienna

oops. missed that one.

EDIT: Although in this case they are both strings, and &H5 = "5" anyways. Chr$(47) (or whatever letter that is) works

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In the case of the op he is referring to Chr(5) not literal "5" this is the ENQ character denoted in terminal font by a character like you would find on a club playing card.

The CHR() function as part of a constant assignment generates an error and this character is not typeable from the keyboard in VB6.

Amazed that this works but here goes.

In your code add then following.

Const strTheChar = "5"

now in the immediate window type ? chr(5)

this will display a small square in the immediate window

highlight the box, right click and copy.

paste this over the 5 in the line Const strTheChar = "5" and you end up with the following

Code:

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    Const strTheChar = ""

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You now have a constant with the value chr(5)

Thanks Killa69


That's quite a trick...I wonder how you can set a constant to carriage return (hex 0D ), supposing vb did not already have vbCR defined already---I don't think your printout cut/paste would work then. But its what I need for now!

Not sure but that's probably why the VBA.Constants have VbCr, VbCrLf, VbTab, VbNullChar Etc.

They seem to have covered all the ones that are likely to cause a problem.