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Procedures In Visual Basic 6
Visual Basic offers different types of procedures to execute small sections of coding in applications.
The various procedures are elucidated in details in this section. Visual Basic programs can be
broken into smaller logical components called Procedures. Procedures are useful for condensing
repeated operations such as the frequently used calculations, text and control manipulation etc.
The benefits of using procedures in programming are:
It is easier to debug a program a program with procedures, which breaks a program into discrete
logical limits.
Procedures used in one program can act as building blocks for other programs with slight
modifications.
A Procedure can be Sub, Function or Property Procedure.
Sub Procedures
A sub procedure can be placed in standard, class and form modules. Each time the procedure is
called, the statements between Sub and End Sub are executed. The syntax for a sub procedure is
as follows:
[Private | Public] [Static] Sub Procedurename [( arglist)]
[ statements]
End Sub
arglist is a list of argument names separated by commas. Each argument acts like a variable in the
procedure. There are two types of Sub Procedures namely general procedures and event
procedures.
Event Procedures
An event procedure is a procedure block that contains the control's actual name, an underscore(_),
and the event name. The following syntax represents the event procedure for a Form_Load event.
Private Sub Form_Load()
....statement block..
End Sub
Event Procedures acquire the declarations as Private by default.
General Procedures
A general procedure is declared when several event procedures perform the same actions. It is a
good programming practice to write common statements in a separate procedure (general
procedure) and then call them in the event procedure.
In order to add General procedure:
The Code window is opened for the module to which the procedure is to be added.
The Add Procedure option is chosen from the Tools menu, which opens an Add Procedure
dialog box as shown in the figure given below.
The name of the procedure is typed in the Name textbox
Under Type, Sub is selected to create a Sub procedure, Functionto create a Function
procedure or Property to create a Property procedure.
Under Scope, Public is selected to create a procedure that can be invoked outside the
module, or Private to create a procedure that can be invoked only from within the module.
We can also create a new procedure in the current module by typing Sub ProcedureName,
Function ProcedureName, or Property ProcedureName in the Code window. A Function procedure
returns a value and a Sub Procedure does not return a value.
Function Procedures
Functions are like sub procedures, except they return a value to the calling procedure. They are
especially useful for taking one or more pieces of data, called arguments and performing some
tasks with them. Then the functions returns a value that indicates the results of the tasks complete
within the function.
The following function procedure calculates the third side or hypotenuse of a right triangle, where A
and B are the other two sides. It takes two arguments A and B (of data type Double) and finally
returns the results.
Function Hypotenuse (A As Double, B As Double) As Double
Hypotenuse = sqr (A^2 + B^2)
End Function
The above function procedure is written in the general declarations section of the Code window. A
function can also be written by selecting the Add Procedure dialog box from the Tools menu and by
choosing the required scope and type.
Property Procedures
A property procedure is used to create and manipulate custom properties. It is used to create read
only properties for Forms, Standard modules and Class [Link] Basic provides three kind
of property procedures-Property Let procedure that sets the value of a property, Property Get
procedure that returns the value of a property, and Property Set procedure that sets the references
to an object.
Related Topics
VB6 Data Types, Modules and Operators
Variables in Visual Basic 6
Control Structures in VB6 - If...Then...Else Statement, Select...Case Statement
Loops in Visual Basic 6
Arrays in Visual Basic 6
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