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Question about Using Dim

Sandra Truax

4 years ago

In several videos,  Richard said you could NOT use
   Dim a, b, c As Long
   Or
   Dim a, b, c as string
However I was watching another instructor and he did it in his video so I tried it as follows and they both worked. Is there a reason why this is bad programming and I shouldn't do it?

    Dim a, b, c As Long
        a = 5
        b = 3
        c = a + b
    MsgBox c

    Dim a, b As String
        a = "Mr."
        b = "Smith"
    MsgBox a & " " & b

	Kevin Robertson @Reply 4 years ago
Using your example: Dim a, b As String a is a Variant, b is a String To declare both a and b as String you must declare each variable as the specific type. Dim a as String, b as String If you know the type of data is always going to be a String, declare it as a String. If you are unsure what data type will be returned, declare it as a variant (you can convert it later, if needed).

	Richard Rost @Reply 4 years ago
Any video in which you might see that is either (a) a goof on my part, or (b) I'm trying to illustrate how Dim works. If the topic of the video isn't Dim itself, it's probably a goof. :)

	Richard Rost @Reply 4 years ago
Oh wait... you said ANOTHER instructor did that. OK... that brings up some other thoughts... (a) why are you cheating on me? (b) that instructor either goofed, doesn't know better, or is lazy (or all three) LOL. I kidding. :) Yes... that will WORK as in it won't throw a compile-time error, but there are several problems with having those a Variants when you're expecting them to be strings.

	Sandra Truax OP @Reply 4 years ago
Richard, I'm so ashamed I cheated on you! Won't happen again LOL. Free isn't worth it if what he's says is misleading! That's why I asked the question becaused I knew I could trust y'all and the answer you would give me. Thank you Kevin for explaining so that I could understand why I shouldn't do that.

Richard Rost @Reply

4 years ago

Yeah, be careful what you read/watch out there. Lots of misinformation. It looks like this guy (the other video you watched) just made a lazy mistake that I'm guilty of from time to time myself. But I've seen some tutorials where people give CLEARLY wrong information. I've called a couple of them out on it. I've got a nasty-gram I need to write to one author who is telling people to use OneDrive or DropBox to share an Access database. NO! NO!

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