[AccessD] Array dimensions, Row - Col or Col Row

Jürgen Welz jwelz at hotmail.com
Sat Feb 21 11:53:21 CST 2004


Pet peeve - Microsoft documentation and book authors that insist that the 
the first dimension of 2 dimensional array is the row and the second is the 
column.  I see that this carries over into the .Net books I'm reading.  When 
was the last time you used a Recordset .getRows method and had the first 
index refer to the record and the second to the field?  When was the last 
time you redimensioned an array to add a column rather than to add or remove 
a number of rows (records)?  How often does a table/query change in size as 
to the number of rows (records) in comparison to the number of columns 
(fields)?

It doesn't really matter which it is, but with the old versions of VB/A, you 
could only resize the last index of a multi-dimensioned array (without 
copying to a new array anyway) so the only practical usage is to add rows to 
a fixed number of columns which is in fact how it was implemented.  Then the 
authors (Dianne Zak for example) and even Microsoft help deliberately 
explain them to be varArray(RowIndex, ColIndex) when in the actual practical 
implementation it is nearly always (ColIndex, RowIndex).

It doesn't matter which it is because it is really just an abstract data 
structure that you can in theory map as you please.  The problem I have is 
when documentation insists on defining it in an impractical manner in the 
context of getrows and other database usage making it obvious that the VB 
data people didn't speak with the VB language people.  I had hoped that by 
.Net they would have a chance to write new documentation and finally get it 
right but I've been reading the Sybex Maastering Visual Basic .NET Database 
Programming, Visual Basic .NET Developer's Handbook and Mastering Visual 
Basic .NET and Evangelos Petroutsos keeps right on defining it backwards 
when he could have just shut up.

Why is it that within a single company and a single development platform, 
developers insist on driving on different sides of the road?  Is there a 
means to lodge a complaint with Microsoft so that the next time they replace 
the entire language they might finally get the documentaion consistent?


Ciao
Jürgen Welz
Edmonton, Alberta
jwelz at hotmail.com

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