16.3. Whitespace

In the Visual Basic 2005 language, spaces and tabs are considered to be whitespace (so named because you see only the white of the underlying "page"). Extra whitespace is generally ignored in Visual Basic 2005 statements. Thus, you can write:

 Dim myVariable as Integer = 5 

or:

 Dim     myVariable     as     Integer     =     5 

and the compiler will treat the two statements as identical.

The exception to this rule is that whitespace within strings is not ignored. If you write:

 Console.WriteLine("Hello World") 

each space between "Hello" and "World" is treated as another character in the string.

Most of the time, the use of whitespace is intuitive. The key is to use whitespace to make the program more readable to the programmer; the compiler is indifferent.

However, there are instances when the use of whitespace is quite significant. Although the expression:

 Dim myVariable as Integer = 5 'no whitespace around = sign 

is the same as:

 Dim myVariable as Integer=5 

it is not the same as:

 DimmyVariable as Integer=5 'no white space around = sign 

The compiler knows that the whitespace on either side of the assignment operator is extra, but the whitespace between the keyword Dim and the name of the variable is not extra, and is required.

This is not surprising; the whitespace allows the compiler to parse the keyword Dim rather than some unknown term DimmyVariable. You are free to add as much or as little whitespace between Dim and myVariable as you care to, but there must be at least one whitespace character (typically a space or tab).