[AccessD] VBA Field Names - Curiosity Question

John,

Thanks for your insights.

Yes, I suppose that because all field definitions in COBOL are located
in one central place at the beginning of the program (the Data
Division), it was/is easier to find them.

I wasn't trying to say that either approach was good or bad, I was just
curious and trying to understand things better.  I may have some brain
damage from the 30 years of COBOL  :-)

Brad

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-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of John W Colby
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2013 10:31 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] VBA Field Names - Curiosity Question

I think the practice started simply because the dim statement can be in
many different locations in VBA.  It can be in a global module (global
to all modules) , or it can be in the header of the module (global to
the module) that it is used in or it can be in the function where it is
used (local to the function).  It is useful to know what datatype
something is when you are trying to manipulate it.  Multiplying a string
with an int is going to cause problems.

OTOH, strMyVar * intMyOtherVar makes it immediately obvious that we
don't want to do that.  
Instr(intMyOtherVar...) is immediately obvious.  Many issues will
compile but give run time errors. 
Corner cases that only run once a year can cause nightmares to resolve.

Just because language practices 40 years ago doesn't do something
doesn't necessarily mean that it is bad idea.

John W. Colby

Reality is what refuses to go away
when you do not believe in it

On 7/1/2013 11:01 AM, Brad Marks wrote:
> All,
>
> In a prior life, I was sentenced to work with COBOL for over 30 years.
> For the past three years, I spend my time in the world of VBA.
>
> Since starting to work with VBA, I have been curious about something, 
> but have never asked about it.
>
> In the COBOL realm (at least where I worked), we did not indicate the 
> field type in the field name.
>
> Examples -
> 01 Part-Number   PICTURE X(30).
> 01 Part-Cost    Comp-3    PICTURE 9(05).
>
>
> In VBA examples, I see most people using prefixes such as Str, Lng, 
> Dat, Etc.
>
> I have never quite understood why people do this when working with VBA

> while I believe that very few people did this in the COBOL realm.
>
> In COBOL we would simply look at the Picture clause in the field name 
> definition.  This would be the equivalent of looking at the DIM 
> statement.
>
> Again, this is just a curiosity question.
>
> Thanks,
> Brad
>

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