Something funny about constants

[vbcandies]

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?

[dglienna]

Const strTheChar as String = &H5

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

Const strTheChar as String = "5"

[DataMiser]

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

[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

[WoF]

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.

[DataMiser]

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

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.

[Killa69]

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

    Const strTheChar = ""

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

[vbcandies]

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!

[Killa69]

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.