VB Tutorial 5

VB Tutorial 5-Basic Syntax 2

In our last tutorial we looked at Visual Basic statements in the context of the VB debugger and Immediate Windows and how they help to understand how VB statements work and debug programs. Three major VB statement types were emphasized - assignment, conditionals, and iterations. In this tutorial we will spend some time on the iteration or loop statements of Visual Basic and then return to conditionals and the use of Select Case and how it simplifies a GUI calculator application.

Loops like conditionals are the bread and butter of programming logic. Of course, any loop can be done with conditionals like in the first column of Table 1.

Table 1 Comparison of Loops
Loop using Conditionals	Loop using For statement
Dim ii as Integer, Ival(100) as Integer, sum as Integer ' some code that reads in values to Ival .... 'Now we want to sum the values in Ival ii=1 sum=0 Dim isw as Integer Loopback: sum = sum + Ival(ii) ii=ii+1 If ii > Ubound(Ival) Then isw = 2 Else isw = 1 End If On isw GoTo Loopback, Endloop Endloop:	Dim ii as Integer, Ival(100) as Integer, sum as Integer ' some code that reads in values to Ival .... 'Now we want to sum the values in Ival sum = 0 for ii = 1 to Ubound(Ival) sum = sum i+ Ival(ii) Next ii

But also as can be clearly seen in Table 1, using loop statements is much easier and less mistake prone. In the conditional Loop we have to add an extra variable, isw, and a conditional If along with an On .. GoTo. In contrast, the For loop is just three lines long. Note the use of the Ubound() function - it returns the length of the array, Ival. So the For loop just sums the values in the array Ival.

Visual Basic provide 5 types of loop statements as shown in table 2. One of these, the While .. Wend, has been obsoleted by the Do loop so we will not cover it in any detail. The For Each is used mostly for objects so it will be covered later when we discuss that topic.The For loop, as we have just seen, is used primarily when one needs to count through a series of values often contained in arrays. The Do loop is used to continue a loop While a condition is true or Until a condition is broken as shown in the examples in Table 2. The Do loop is especially powerful in Visual Basic because it has two forms - Do .. While/Until which guarantees at least one iteration of a loop will be done. The second type, Do While/Until ... Loop screens the loop condition right at the top - so maybe no iterations will be done. Both types are useful. When reading buffers and and checking data structures the first is often used while Do While/Until is used in error checking like end of file and others.

Unlike the While .. Wend, the For and Do loops provide an Exit statement. The Exit statement is important because often a loop will have 2 or 3 conditions for exit that need to be tested for somewhere in the body of the loop. Then a test like If xx < xMin then Exit Do causes the loop to be immediately exited and the next statement beyond the loop is executed next. You can see this by trying it yourself using VB's debugger as outlined in the last tutorial.

Table 2 Visual Basic's Iteration or Loop Statements
Loop type	Examples	Notes
Do While/Until .. Exit Do .. Loop Conditional 0 or more iterations loop	Do Until cnt > 100 cnt = cnt + 1 ... Loop	This loop checks the condition first then proceeds through loop if true.
Do .. Exit Do .. Loop While/Until Conditional 1 or more iterations loop	Do Input Line #fileNo, buffer Loop While Not EOF(fileNo)	This loop does at least one iteration then checks if more are needed.
For Each .. Exit For .. Next Count through an array or collection	For Each dVariant In dblArray sum = sum + dVariant Next	The "In" group can be an array or any collection of objects.
For .. Exit For .. Next Classic counting loop	For ii= 100 To 0 Step -5 if dval(ii) > 100 Then Exit For Next ii	The Step value is optional and defaults to 1. The counter variable must be numeric but not an array.
While ... Wend Conditional loop	While IsNumeric(Mid(InString, ii, 1)) ii = ii + 1 Wend	While loop has been superseded by Do While/Until - for example, there is no Exit.

One of the statements that Visual Basic lacks is the Continue statement. There are times in the middle of a loop when you want to stop testing and just go to the next iteration in the loop. One can approximate this with nested Ifs but the logic of the nesting can quickly become quite complicated and obscure to follow. Visual Basic does not have a Continue statement, but its very powerful Select Case conditional statement will fill in quite well in many cases. The best way to show how a Select Case works is to give an example.

Select Case iswitch
Case 1 'Print a short report
itype = "short"
call PrintReport(itype)
Case 2,3,4 'Print a long, detailed report
itype="long"
call LongReport(itype,isw)
Case 5 'Graph the output
call GraphReport()
Else Case 'All other cases or values of iswitch are an error
MsgBox iswitch + " is not expected, Error"
End Select

This statement works just about the way it reads. If the variable iswitch equals 1, a short report is printed. If the value of iswitch is 2, 3 or 4 then a long, detailed report is to be printed. If the value of iswitch is 5 then a graph is to be printed. And all other values of iswitch are an error so an error message is issued with the Else Case catching all other values. Select Case statements can be nested in one another. This turns out to be helpful in GUI programs where several conditions have

Figure 1 - Visual Basic Calculator

to be tested. The calculator program shown in Figure 1 uses a big Select Case to identify which calculator button is pressed and then based on that info performs the requested computation.But for some button presses we want to know which mouse button was used. A nested Select Case is one way to handle this condition.

There are two other type of conditional statements or better yet functions. One is Switch() and the other is Choose(). Try these examples in VB's Immediate Window (View | Immediate Window or CTRL+G):

i = 3
print Switch(i<0, 234,i=0, 456, i >= 2, 51, i= i,999 )
print Choose(i, -100, 0, 100)

Switch() works by returning the value immediately after the first condition that evaluates to True.In our example, Switch() returns 51. Choose() on the hand use the first variable as an index and returns that value - 100, in our example above. Note that both Switch() and Choose() return Null as their value if no condition is satisfied (Switch()) or the value of the index variable in Choose() is less than or equal to zero or greater than the number of choices available. In the Switch() example, by putting in the condition i=i, 999 at the end we guarantee that it will always return a default of 999 if none of the other conditions are satisfied.

Summary

In this tutorial we have completed the conditional statements by looking at the versatile Select Case and with a glance at the On .. GoTo, Switch() and Choose(). As well we have examined most of the iteration or loop statements in fair detail. So the next tutorial will look at Operators and Assignments to complete a three part mini-review of basic VB grammar. After that lesson we shall return to visual programming in Visual Basic.

Resources:
The book Beginning VB6/Wrox covers conditional and loop statements on pages 56-103; VB6 Black Book/Coriolis does the same on pages 104-110.