by Vesa Piittinen (20 Submissions)
Category: VB function enhancement
Difficulty: Beginner
Date Added: Wed 3rd February 2021
Rating: 
(2 Votes)
I've seen many ways to check whether a certain control index exists in a control array, where all indexes are not filled. For example, you could have a control array of labels with indexes 0, 1 & 3. I guess one of the most common ways to check for this is to use On Error, but I've always found resorting to rising errors a bad habit to do. A much better another alternative is to loop through the control array using For Each and check for the Index property, but even this becomes a bit silly if you know the index you want to check for and loop the entire control array just to check if it is there or not.
The solution: VarType()
VarType returns the variable type of default property of a control, ie. VarType(MyLabels(1)) returns 8 (vbString), from Caption property. What makes this usable for sniffing for valid index is that VarType returns 9 (vbObject) for invalid indexes! There is no control that returns an object in their default property, making this a perfectly safe method to check if an index exists or not.
VBcoders' make sure you add MyLabel to your form and set Index property to 0
Option Explicit
Private Sub Form_Load()
' control array indexes are Integers
Dim I As Integer
Dim C As Label
Load MyLabel(1)
Load MyLabel(3)
' solution one: On Error... looping through all controls
On Error Resume Next
For I = MyLabel.LBound To MyLabel.UBound
' check if the index is there
MyLabel(I) = MyLabel(I)
If Err = 0 Then
' do what you need to do...
Else
Debug.Print "On Error, Invalid index: " & I
Err.Clear
End If
Next I
' that wasn't pretty...
On Error GoTo 0
' solution two: For Each for specific index, must loop through all controls
I = 2
For Each C In MyLabel
' if the index is there we exit the loop
If C.Index = I Then Exit For
Next C
' if we passed though all controls then C is now Nothing
If Not C Is Nothing Then
Debug.Print "For Each, VALID index: " & I
Else
Debug.Print "For Each, Invalid index: " & I
End If
' solution three: VarType looping through all controls
For I = MyLabel.LBound To MyLabel.UBound
If VarType(MyLabel(I)) <> vbObject Then
' VALID
Else
Debug.Print "VarType, Invalid index: " & I
End If
Next I
' solution four: VarType for specific index
I = 2
If VarType(MyLabel(I)) = vbObject Then Debug.Print "VarType, Invalid index: " & I
End Sub
