Last-modified: 22-Aug-95

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• 1. Multiple identifiers after the DIM statement can be confusing
• 2. "Clean up" your project before final EXE compilation.
• 3. Multiple END statements can be dangerous; or, The program thatrefused to terminate.
• 4. What are the latest versions of the various files used by VB?

H. MISCELLANEOUS TIPS AND INFORMATION

1. Multiple identifiers after the DIM statement can be confusing Some programmers with background from Pascal can try the following

   Dim iA, iB, iC as Integer
   
   

   and think that all these 3 variables end up as Integer. In fact, the first two end up as default data type, normally Variant. Instead you should do:

   Dim iA as Integer
   
   Dim iB as Integer
   
   Dim iC as Integer
   
   

   which takes up more space, but gives you room to comment your variables (hint, hint); *or*

   Dim iA%, iB%, iC%
   
   

   which does the whole job.

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2. "Clean up" your project before final EXE compilation. When you are ready to compile your VB project into your 'finished' EXE, be sure to save the project files, exit VB, restart Windows, run VB, load your project and go straight to compiling. Otherwise, your EXE may be larger in file size than necessary due to 'garbage' getting included in the EXE. For some reason, VB does not fully clean up all of the previously used variables or objects that you may have been playing with while developing your program so these get included in your EXE even though they aren't used. Other VB users have even advocated saving all the project files as ASCII, then loading the ASCII files before compiling to further "clean up" the resulting EXE file.

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3. Multiple END statements can be dangerous; or, The program that refused to terminate.

   Suggestion: put the END statement used to exit your program *only* in the Form_Unload event of the main form. Whenever you want to end the program, just tell the main form to unload. Some have reported that after their program have (supposedly) terminated, it still appears in the task list. This can happen if you only hide secondary forms and forget to unload them when you end/unload the main form.

   Also note that the Stop-button on the button-bar of the integrated development environment doesn't really unload anything. It *nukes* the program, which generally is a good idea since it could be a bug in it that caused it to be stuck in an eternal loop or something.

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4. What are the latest versions of the various files used by VB?

   Date	File to download	Updates files	Description
   3/7/94	BTR110.EXE	BTRV110.DLL	Btrieve IISAM Driver
   3/7/94	DATAINDX.EXE	DATAINDX.DOC	"Data Access Guide" Index
   3/7/94	GENERIC.EXE	\VB\CDK\GENERIC	Sample custom control source
   3/7/94	VBGRID.EXE	GRID.VBX	Grid control
   3/7/94	VBHC505.EXE	HC.EXE, HCP.EXE	WinHelp compiler
   3/7/94	MSAJT.EXE	MSAJT110.DLL	Access Database Engine
   3/8/94	MSCOMM.EXE	MSCOMM.VBX	Serial Communications\control
   3/7/94	ORA110.EXE	ORACLE.TXT	Updated ORACLE.TXT file
   6/27/94	SETUPK.EXE	SETUP.EXE	Setup Toolkit
   3/7/94	VBRUN300.EXE	VBRUN300.DLL	Visual Basic Runtime Library
   3/7/94	XBS110.EXE	XBS110.DLL	XBase IISAM Driver

   There is an article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base that points to each of these files and provides more detailed information about the update. To find these articles, query the Microsoft Knowledge Base using the file name and the word "update3.00".

   Note the NEW SETUPKIT update! [Thanks to Marks Harrop <harrop@werple.apana.org.au>]

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