Fast Native Dictionary for VBA. Compatible with Windows and Mac. Does not require any DLL references or any kind of external libraries.

The Dictionary presented in this repository is designed to be a drop-in replacement for Scripting.Dictionary (Microsoft Scripting Runtime - scrrun.dll on Windows). However, there are a few differences, and their purpose is to make this Dictionary the better choice from a functionality perspective. For more details see Compatibility with Scripting.Dictionary.

Special thanks to Guido for his contribution (see Benchmarking code) and for his invaluable feedback and ideas.

Download the latest release, extract and import the Dictionary.cls class into your project.

Although the OLE Automation project reference should be enabled by default (fundamental COM), please enable it if it's disabled. For more details see OLE Automation section.

Please be aware that there is an existing bug in VBA x64, when using For Each.. on a class that has a custom iterator. See this SO article for more details. In short, this bug only happens on x64 and only if For Each is the first call in the method. This can be avoided by replacing calls like For Each v In Dict with For Each v In Dict.Self or by having a method call before the For Each call.

Download the latest release, extract and import the TestDictionary.bas module into your project. Run RunAllDictionaryTests method. On failure, execution will stop on the first failed Assert.

In most cases, this Dictionary is the fastest solution when compared to what is already available. Please see Benchmarking for more details.

For those interested in how this Dictionary works and why some design decisions were made, please see Implementation for more details.

Dim d As New Dictionary
Dim c As Collection
Dim v As Variant

d.Add "abc", 1
d.Add "Abc", New Collection

d("Abc").Add 1
Debug.Print d.Item("abc")
Debug.Print d.Exists("ABC") 'False

d.Remove "abc"
d.RemoveAll

d.CompareMode = vbTextCompare
d.Add "abc", 1
Debug.Print d.Exists("ABC") 'True

On Error Resume Next
d.Add "Abc", New Collection 'Throws error 457
Debug.Print Err.Number
On Error GoTo 0

d.Add 123, 456
Set c = New Collection
d.Add c, "Test"

d.Item(123) = 789
d.Key(c) = "Test"

Debug.Print
For Each v In d
    Debug.Print v
Next v

Debug.Print
For Each v In d.Items
    Debug.Print v
Next v