Visual Basic Conventions

1.3 Visual Basic Conventions

The "rules" for Visual Basic (VB) code are very simple:

         VB is a case-insensitive programming language; that is, the compiler ignores case when reading VB code. So myVar, MyVar, MYvar, and MYVAR all refer to the same variable. Note that Visual Studio imposes a uniform casing on all language elements, although this is not a requirement of the compiler.

         White space (except for line breaks) is ignored when reading VB code.

         Line breaks mark the end of a complete statement; complete VB statements must occupy a single line.

         If you want to break a single statement over several lines, you can use the line continuation character, an underscore (_), which must be preceded by a space and must be the last character on the line that is to be continued.

         If you want to combine multiple statements on a single line, you can use the colon (:). Among other uses, it is commonly used to imitate C++ and C# syntax for inheritance. For example, the code fragment:

                 Public Class MainForm

  Inherits Form 

can be shortened as follows:

Public Class MainForm : Inherits Form

         Two comment symbols are used: the apostrophe (') and the Rem keyword. They may appear at any place within a line.