Working with Arrays

In VB, arrays work in much the same way as they do in all other
languages you have studied.

ARRAY -is an indexed variable, meaning it is one variable with

many parts, each part being referenced by an index number. The
index number being numeric, it can be manipulated by loop
statements, incremented, decremented, etc. An array can contain
any valid data type and, if it is of the Variant type, can even
contain elements of different types.
-An array is declared like any other variable, with the
addition of an index:

Dim Department(6) As String

will declare an array of 7 elements of the String type (we assume

that it will be 7 Department names). The only problem with this
declaration is that the index goes from 0 to 6. So, if you want the
name of the sixth Department you have to specify Department(5),
which can be confusing at times.
To work around this problem you can specify the starting index in
the declaration:

Dim Months(1 To 12) As String

Thus, Months(1) is January and Months(12) is December.

You don't even have to start at 1. If your Sections are numbered
101 - 120 you can define an array:

Dim Sections(101 To 120) As Integer

One common method of manipulating arrays is to use For...Next

loops:
 Working with arrays

An array can also be assigned to a variable in code. Look at the

following example and understand that that is not an implicit declaration.
The variable "Week" is declared as Variant. It is assigned an array value in
code.
Now, when we get to the next set of controls, different kinds of Lists, these
notions may prove useful.

ListBox

With the ListBox control the user can select items from a list of choices.
Although the list of choices can be entered in the List property of the control,
as in the example below, this is not a very good habit to get into. It is
essentially "hardcoding" data into the program and it can cause maintenance
headaches.

The common technique for loading a ListBox is to do it in code, with the

Form_Load event. This way, if items have to be added it is a simple matter
to add a line of code.
 It is sometimes difficult to distinguish an object's Properties and its
Methods. In the example above we used lst_team.AddItem. What is
AddItem? It is a Method. How do I know? Well, to tell them apart, think of
grammar. A property is a characteristic, something that the object is, a
color, a size - it is like an adjective. A Method is an action, something that
it does, in fact, a verb. When you see object.something_descriptive, it is a
Property. When you see object.some_action, it is a Method.
 

In the example shown, AddItem is a Method because it is the action of

adding items to the ListBox.

If you wanted to remove an item from the list in code, there is a

RemoveItem Method for the ListBox. lst_team.RemoveItem 2 would
remove the 3rd team - remember that it starts at 0.
When the Form opens, it will load the list in Form_load before the ListBox is
displayed. If there are too many items for the space allocated to the ListBox,
it will create a vertical scroll bar.
When the user selects one of the teams from the list, we have to have a way
of capturing that information in a variable. That is done with the Text
property of the ListBox:
TeamName = lst_team.Text
ComboBox

The ComboBox is called that because it's a combination of a ListBox and a

TextBox. It has the advantage over the ListBox of not taking up space until it
is actually used which means that it makes it easier to position on the Form.
But the combo has the disadvantage, sort of, that the user can enter his own
information, in addition to what is in the list. This may make data validation
harder because the choices are not limited. When you want to force the user
to make a choice only among the specified items, use a ListBox, even if it is
a bit more awkward. If the user is allowed to override the choices, uses a
ComboBox.
As in the ListBox, use the Text property to get the information input.
Label3.Caption = cbo_position.Text

As you can
see, it is fairly
simple to load
the ListBox
and the
ComboBox
during the
From_Load
event. The
only other
detail to note
is that the
order in which
the items
appear in the
Combo is not
the same as
the order in
which the
items were
added. That is
intentional - it
is done with the Sorted property for the ComboBox. It can also be done for
the ListBox.

DriveListBox, DirListBox, FileListBox

For this next example we need to create a new form, Form2, in the current
Project.

Specifications: While in Form1, the Registration form, we need to be able

to hit a button which will call-up a new form, the DirList form, which will look
like the example below. This form will allow us to select a type of file that we
want to see and then to select a file, in a directory, in a drive that will be
specified. If the file selected is an executable, we will run the file. If it is a
text file we will call-up Notepad to edit it, and if it is a graphics file we will
call-up the image editor.
In fact, this allows us to call an external program from inside a form. If, for
example, we wish to edit the player's picture before storing it, we can open
the picture file with the image editor, change it, and continue with the rest
of the form.
There are 3 new controls on this form, plus the buttons and the ListBox.
Since you almost always have only one of each of those controls on the
form, we won't bother to change the names of the controls in this example -
we keep them as: Drive1, Dir1, and File1.

The control that shows the current drive is called a DriveListBox. The name
of the active drive is in the control's Drive property. The selected drive can
be changed, in code, by writing: Drive1.Drive = "D:", for example.

Don't bother looking for the .Drive property in the Properties window for Drive1 -
you won't find it. Same with Dir1.Path and List1.FileName. That's because Drive is
a runtime property. That is, one that is only available when the program runs.
Makes sense when you think about it. You can design the DriveListBox to have the
size, the color and the font you want but you can't tell it which drive will be active
at runtime. That will have to come from the system.
VB is full of these details. Every control has properties that are only accessible at
runtime, through code. The only way to find them is to look in the documentation.
A big Reference Manual is handy and the Help function helps a lot with this, too. 

The current directory is in the DirectoryListBox. The name is in the

Dir1.Path property.

The default event associated with Drive1 and Dir1 is called a Change event.
That's because nothing has to be done with those controls until they are
actually changed. Remember, when the program runs they are automatically
loaded with the current drive and the current directory active.

The current file selected is in the FileListBox, in the File1.FileName

property. This one is not automatically loaded because there is no current
active file. You select a file by clicking on it, generating a Click event.
Study the code and then look at the explanations below. To keep the code
section from getting too long, explanations have not been included as
comments.
Program notes:

 First task in Form_Load is to load the list of file types. We

only want to display files that are Executable, Text or
Graphics. The .EXE is selected by default - ListIndex =0.

 The FileListBox Pattern property creates the filter for the

selection.

 Whenever we change the Drive selection or the Directory

selection, a Change event is generated. When the Drive
changes, the Directory's path changes and when the
Directory changes, the list of files changes.

 When you click on the Start button you first have to check
if a file is selected. If not, issue a message.

 The Right() function, which we will look at in Lesson7,

checks to see if the rightmost character of the filename is
a \. If it is it means that the file is in the root directory. If
it isn't, we have to add a \ between the path and the
filename.

 Based on the type of file selected, we execute the Shell

function which runs an executable program.
vbNormalFocus is the window style argument that tells
the program to run in a normal window.

 When we click on a file type, the Pattern property for the

FieList must change.

 A double-click on a filename does the same as hitting the

Start button.

 Remember, we called this Form from the Registration

form. When we're done with this, we want to close it and
go back to the calling form. The Exit button does an
Unload of the current form but, it does not execute an
End statement because that would cause the Project to
end.
This final section of code is in the Registration form. It is the code for the
Viewer button which calls the DirList form.

The only thing to do is to Load the form using its FormName (from the Name
property) and then to execute its Show method. The argument
vbModeless means that the form does not get exclusive focus. The
opposite of vbModeless is vbModal. A modal form is one which requires
action from the user before it can be closed. Usually, error messages are
modal - you have to respond, usually by hitting the OK or Cancel button,
and you can't click on another form to send this one to the background, and
you can't close it with the close box. A modeless form can be sent to the
background and it can be closed at any time.