VB6 Tutorial 50: Arrays

By | 2018-05-23

An array is a collection of items of the same data type. All items have the same name and they are identified by a subscript or index. When you need to work with several similar data values, you can use array to eliminate the difficulties of declaring so many variables.

For example, if you want to compute the daily sales and sum the sales amount after 30 days, you don’t need to have 30 variables. Just simply declare an array of size 30 and get your work done !

Declaring an array

Syntax: Dim Variable_Name(index) As [Type]

Example

Dim month(10) As Integer   '11 elements

or

Dim month(1 to 12) as Integer   '12 elements

In the first line, month(10) is a collection of 11 integer values or items. month(0) is the 1st item and month(10) is the 10th & last item of the array. So 0 and 10 are respectively the lower bound and upper bound of the array.

In the other line, month(1 to 12) is a collection of 12 integer values or elements or items where month(1) is the 1st item and month(12) is the last. So 1 and 12 are respectively the lower bound and upper bound of the array.

Types of arrays

The array used in the example is a one-dimensional and fixed-size array. An array can have more than one dimension. The other types of arrays are multi-dimensional arrays, Dynamic arrays and Control arrays.

Fixed-Size Array: We know the total number of items the array in the above example holds. So that is a Fixed-Size array.

LBound and UBound

The LBound and Ubound functions return the lower bound and upper bound of an array respectively.

Example

Private Sub cmdDisplay_Click()
    Dim arr(10) As Integer
    a = LBound(arr)
    b = UBound(arr)
    MsgBox "Lower bound = " & a & "  Upper bound = " & b
End Sub

Initializing an array

You can use For Loop to initialize an array.

Example

Dim day(10) As Integer, i As Integer
For i = 0 To 10
     day(i) = InputBox("Enter day value")
Next i

You can also initialize each array item separately in the way a variable is initialized.

Example

This program inputs the Sale amount of each day and sums the total amount of 5 days.

Private Sub cmdStart_Click()
    Dim SaleDay(1 To 5)      'Sale in a particular day
    Dim i As Integer, Sale As Long
    Sale = 0
    For i = 1 To 5
        SaleDay(i) = InputBox("Enter Sale amount of Day " & i)
        Sale = Sale + SaleDay(i)
    Next i
    MsgBox "Total Sale of 5 days = $" & Sale
End Sub

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.