Variable Declaration Shortcuts

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Variable Declaration Shortcuts

I am working on a project for a customer and the previous developer had used shrotcuts like ! , % , $, # when declaring their variables. I have never used these before and cannot find any documentation on these. Has anyone ever used them before

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Variable Declaration Shortcuts

  • OlegGo

    In VB5 they translated as follows:

    ! - Single

    % - Integer

    # - Double

    & - Long

    $ - String

    @ - Currency

  • milkshake

    and should no longer be used in .NET

  • tvenhaus

    These are tags added to the ends of variable names (they can also be used on method names) to specify the type of the variable.

    Believe it or not, they still exist in VB.NET, but I think every standard you'll ever come across would say to avoid them.

    (We call them "ancient type specifiers" at Tangible...).

    Some people (I've only met one) like them since instead of typing "Dim someString As String", you can save a few keystrokes by typing "Dim someString$" (see Dave299's reply for the correspondence of the specifiers and types).

    VB.NET still cries out for more purging of these incredibly ugly 'features' (ditto for 'REM').



  • kokitsune

    Thank you,

    That might very well explain why I am having issues in .NET..


  • Neotech

    Hi,

    These are also available in VB.Net.

    If it is recommended that we all stop using them then I will continue to use the Convert CLASS.

    Code Block

    Dim myNum As Object

    myNum = 8.0! 'Single.

    myNum = 9% 'Integer.

    myNum = 10& 'Long.

    myNum = 11.0# 'Double.

    'Why was F decided to be used for a sin-gle Why not G as the 1st letter of the 2nd syllable

    'Why was R decided to be used for a dou-ble Why not B as the 1st letter of the 2nd syllable

    myNum = 2D 'Decimal.

    myNum = 3.0F 'Single.

    myNum = 4I 'Integer.

    myNum = 4UI 'Uinteger.

    myNum = 5L 'Long.

    myNum = 5UL 'ULong.

    myNum = 6.0R 'Double.

    myNum = 7S 'Short.

    myNum = 7US 'UShort.

    I am guessing that Microsoft will keep these in Visual Studio to maintain some "backwards compatability" with older code

    Regards,

    John



  • Mary-Rosey

    they work well in 6 too

  • Seppe001

    It's the symbol postfixes that are there for backwards compatibility (e.g., !, %, $, ...), not the letter postfixes (also, the symbol postfixes can also be used in variable declarations instead of specifying the type explicitly).



  • Variable Declaration Shortcuts
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