Sometimes, you just have to make some choices, and conditional expressions will help you do just that. Visual Basic includes support for conditions, which use data tests to determine which code should be processed next. If StatementsThe most common conditional statement is the If statement. It is equivalent to English questions in the form, "If such-and-such is true, then do so-and-so." For instance, it can handle, "If you have $20, then you can buy me dinner," but not, "If a train departs Chicago at 45 miles per hour, when will it run out of coal?" If statements have a syntax that spans multiple source code lines. 01 If (hadAHammer = True) Then 02 DoHammer(inTheMorning, allOverThisLand) 03 DoHammer(inTheEvening, allOverThisLand) 04 ElseIf (hadAShovel = True) Then 05 DoShovel(inTheNoontime, allOverThisLand) 06 Else 07 TakeNap(allDayLong, onMySofa) 08 End If The If statement lets you define branches in your code based on conditions. It is built from three main components.
If statements are cool because they make your code more than just a boring set of linear step-by-step instructions that never deviate for any reason. Software is written to support some real-world process, and real-world processes are seldom linear. The If statement makes it possible for your code to react to different data conditions, taking the appropriate branch when necessary. Once the entire If . . . End If block completes, processing continues with the next statement that follows the End If statement. Select Case StatementsSometimes you might write an If statement that simply tests a variable against one possible value, then another, then another, then another, and so on. If (billValue = 1) Then presidentName = "Washington" ElseIf (billValue = 2) Then presidentName = "Jefferson" ElseIf (billValue = 5) Then presidentName = "Lincoln" ... And on it goes, through many more ElseIf clauses. It's effective, but a little tedious, as your code must specifically test every case. The Select Case statement provides a cleaner alternative to simple value comparisons against a list. 01 Select Case billValue 02 Case 1 03 presidentName = "Washington" 04 Case 2 05 presidentName = "Jefferson" 06 Case 5 07 presidentName = "Lincoln" 08 Case 20 09 presidentName = "Jackson" 10 Case 50 11 presidentName = "Grant" 12 Case 10, 100 13 presidentName = "!! Non-president" 14 Case > 100 15 presidentName = "!! Value too large" 16 Case Else 17 presidentName = "!! Invalid value" 18 End Select Unlike the If statement, which checks for a Boolean result, Select Case compares a single value against a set of test case values. In the example, the billValue variable is compared against the different values identified by each Case clause. All code that follows a Case clause (until the next Case clause) is the branch that is processed when a match is found. An optional Case Else condition (line 16) catches anything that is not matched by any other Case. Normally, Case clauses list single values for comparison. They can also include a list of comma-separated comparison values (line 12), or simple range comparison expressions (line 14). IIf FunctionVisual Basic includes a variation of the If statement for "in line" use. Consider the following statement. If (gender = "F") Then fullGender = "Female" _ Else fullGender = "Male" Using the IIf function, this statement compresses into a single assignment statement with an embedded condition. fullGender = IIf(gender = "F", "Female", "Male") The IIf function has three comma-delimited arguments. The first is the condition, which must result in a Boolean True or False value. The second argument is returned by the function if the condition is True; a condition result of False returns the third argument. For simple conditions that are destined to return single values to a common variable, it's really a useful function. But with anything really useful, there are caveats. The caveat with IIf is that anything appearing inside the IIf statement will be processed, even if it is not returned as a result. Here's a dangerous example: purgeResult = IIf(level = 1, PurgeSet1(), PurgeSet2()) The statement will correctly return the result of either PurgeSet1() or PurgeSet2() based on the value of level. The problem, or potential problem, is that both functions, PurgeSet1() and PurgeSet2(), will be called; if level is 1, both PurgeSet1() and PurgeSet2() will be called, even though only the function result from PurgeSet1() will be returned. |