Finding an Element in an Array

Category:

Lists, Collections and Arrays

Type:

Snippets

Difficulty:

Intermediate

Author:

Anonymous

Version Compatibility: Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic 5

More information:

In VB5 and VB6, there is no "native way" of searching the elements of an Array for a match. This little snippet will help you do just that. If there's no match, it returns 0 (zero), if there is, it returns the index of the first match. Simply place this code into a function.

Instructions: Copy the declarations and code below and paste directly into your VB project.

Declarations:
Dim someArray(10) As String Dim someElement As String

Code:

'**************************************************************
' This is a simple example code, and is obviously of little
' real use. The idea is to use the "important part" below 
' with an Array already filled with elements (instead of 
' "someArray") and an element to be searched for (instead of
' "someElement").
'**************************************************************

'Fill array
someArray(0) = "Paul"
someArray(1) = "John"
someArray(2) = "Richard"
someArray(3) = "James"
someArray(4) = "George"
someArray(5) = "Michael"
someArray(6) = "Robert"
someArray(7) = "Daniel"
someArray(8) = "Raymond"
someArray(9) = "Kevin"

'Define element
someElement = "James"

'------------------------------------------------------------
'Here comes the important part...
'------------------------------------------------------------
'Check to see if element exists
If InStr(Join(someArray), someElement) > 0 Then  '==> 3, in this case
  'Code block to execute if found
Else
  'Code block to execute if not found
End If
'------------------------------------------------------------
'And there it was. :)
'------------------------------------------------------------