& versus +

[Beginner]

In the past, it was considered good practice to do use & for string concatenation
rather than + because of evil type coercion. Does this still hold true for
VB.NET, or does it not matter anymore? Does it make any difference if you're
using Option Strict?

[Jonathan Allen]

Officially, we are suppose to use "&" for appending strings. I haven't
checked to see if "+" even works, as I never use it.

When Option Strict is on, there is no evil type coercion.

--
Jonathan Allen


"Beginner" <a@b.com> wrote in message news:3bbc6c60$1@news.devx.com...
>
> In the past, it was considered good practice to do use & for string
concatenation
> rather than + because of evil type coercion. Does this still hold true for
> VB.NET, or does it not matter anymore? Does it make any difference if
you're
> using Option Strict?

[Beginner]

"Jonathan Allen" <greywolf@cts.com> wrote:
>Officially, we are suppose to use "&" for appending strings. I haven't
>checked to see if "+" even works, as I never use it.

Is that still true with VB.NET? I believe C# only supports +. So, if there
is a difference, doesn't that mean that C# may not do string concatonations
properly?

[Cali LaFollett]

> >Officially, we are suppose to use "&" for appending strings. I haven't
> >checked to see if "+" even works, as I never use it.
>
> Is that still true with VB.NET? I believe C# only supports +. So, if there
> is a difference, doesn't that mean that C# may not do string
concatonations
> properly?

Yes, you can use the "+" for concatenations. It works just fine now as long
as you use Option Strict. As Jonathan mentioned, I also mainly use the "&"
since that my fingers are used to typing. :-)

Cal

[Gregor R. Peisker]

Hi,

> >Officially, we are suppose to use "&" for appending strings. I haven't
> >checked to see if "+" even works, as I never use it.

> Is that still true with VB.NET? I believe C# only supports +. So, if there
> is a difference, doesn't that mean that C# may not do string concatonations
> properly?

C# is a different language, thus it's "+" operator may have different semantics
than the one in VB.NET. If you use strings as parameters, C# will concatenate
them; if your operands are numbers, it will add them. You can't mix both in C#
anyway.

Gregor

[Jonathan Allen]

> Is that still true with VB.NET?

There is a MS document that compares the operators in all the .Net
languages. In it, the "&" symbol is explicitly listed as the string
concatenation operator for VB.

> I believe C# only supports +.

Like C, they use the "&" symbol as the bitwise operator "And". So they have
to use the addition operator for concatenation.

--
Jonathan Allen


"Beginner" <a@b.com> wrote in message news:3bbc84d7$1@news.devx.com...
>
> "Jonathan Allen" <greywolf@cts.com> wrote:
> >Officially, we are suppose to use "&" for appending strings. I haven't
> >checked to see if "+" even works, as I never use it.
>
> Is that still true with VB.NET? I believe C# only supports +. So, if there
> is a difference, doesn't that mean that C# may not do string
concatonations
> properly?

[Jonathan Allen]

> Yes, you can use the "+" for concatenations.

I would rather it didn't.

--
Jonathan Allen


"Cali LaFollett" <cali@no-spam-please-visionized.com> wrote in message
news:3bbc86aa@news.devx.com...
> > >Officially, we are suppose to use "&" for appending strings. I haven't
> > >checked to see if "+" even works, as I never use it.
> >
> > Is that still true with VB.NET? I believe C# only supports +. So, if
there
> > is a difference, doesn't that mean that C# may not do string
> concatonations
> > properly?
>
> Yes, you can use the "+" for concatenations. It works just fine now as
long
> as you use Option Strict. As Jonathan mentioned, I also mainly use the "&"
> since that my fingers are used to typing. :-)
>
> Cal
>
>

[Cali LaFollett]

> I would rather it didn't.

I agree completely. Nothing like mixing up more standards huh? <g>

Cal

[Cali LaFollett]

> There is a MS document that compares the operators in all the .Net
> languages. In it, the "&" symbol is explicitly listed as the string
> concatenation operator for VB.

Kinda funny too since if you look at some of the sample code for strings,
they use "+". I wish MS could stick to their own docs as a lot of people
will look at the sample code to figure out the correct way to do things.
Although, with Option Strict on, it shouldn't make much of a difference, it
would still be nice to follow a standard.

Cal

[Jonathan Allen]

Wish List: Option Sanity

This option would turn off all backwards compatibility options in the
IDE/Compiler. A partial list includes...

The + operator can only be used for Addition.

The On Error syntax will not be allowed.

While/Wend will be auto-corrected to Do/Loop instead of While/End While

Redundant X=Nothing lines will be erased.

Dim X() As Integer is not allowed. The data type is "Integer()" not
"Integer". The former is a reference type derived from Array, the other a
structure.

In addition, it will make the smarty-pants IDE no so lazy...

When you see "X cannot be implicitly converted to type Y", the grammar
checker offers to add the CType call for you.

When viewing a string, inner quotes are distinguished from outer quotes...
S = "He said, ""The pigs are flying!"""
....when not being edited becomes...
S = "He said, "The pigs are flying!""
....where the outer quotes are bold and in a different color from the string
contents.

Both ...
Dim X (5) as Integer
.... and ...
Dim X as Integer(5)
.... will be displayed as...
Dim X As Integer(0 To 5)
.... with the "0 To" part in gray. That is, until they fix it so that we can
specify lower bounds again.



--
Jonathan Allen


"Cali LaFollett" <cali@no-spam-please-visionized.com> wrote in message
news:3bbc9d19$1@news.devx.com...
> > I would rather it didn't.
>
> I agree completely. Nothing like mixing up more standards huh? <g>
>
> Cal
>
>

[Jonathan Allen]

> Kinda funny too since if you look at some of the sample code for strings,
> they use "+". I wish MS could stick to their own docs as a lot of people
> will look at the sample code to figure out the correct way to do things.

Looking back, it seems like every version of Basic has countless examples of
how not to write a program. The documentation itself is great, but you would
think by now they would use real programmers to write the example sections.

--
Jonathan Allen


"Cali LaFollett" <cali@no-spam-please-visionized.com> wrote in message
news:3bbc9db5$1@news.devx.com...
> > There is a MS document that compares the operators in all the .Net
> > languages. In it, the "&" symbol is explicitly listed as the string
> > concatenation operator for VB.
>
> Kinda funny too since if you look at some of the sample code for strings,
> they use "+". I wish MS could stick to their own docs as a lot of people
> will look at the sample code to figure out the correct way to do things.
> Although, with Option Strict on, it shouldn't make much of a difference,
it
> would still be nice to follow a standard.
>
> Cal
>
>

[Cali LaFollett]

> Looking back, it seems like every version of Basic has countless examples
of
> how not to write a program. The documentation itself is great, but you
would
> think by now they would use real programmers to write the example
sections.

May want to add that one to your wish list you posted earlier! :-)

Don't think you will get that one though! <vbg>

Cal

[Jonathan Allen]

> May want to add that one to your wish list you posted earlier! :-)

The documentation uses filters instead of options. But I wouldn't be against
a filter called "The stuff I actually want to see."


--
Jonathan Allen


"Cali LaFollett" <cali@no-spam-please-visionized.com> wrote in message
news:3bbca60a$1@news.devx.com...
> > Looking back, it seems like every version of Basic has countless
examples
> of
> > how not to write a program. The documentation itself is great, but you
> would
> > think by now they would use real programmers to write the example
> sections.
>
> May want to add that one to your wish list you posted earlier! :-)
>
> Don't think you will get that one though! <vbg>
>
> Cal
>
>

[Dan Barclay]

On 4 Oct 2001 07:04:16 -0700, "Beginner" <a@b.com> wrote:

>
>In the past, it was considered good practice to do use & for string concatenation
>rather than + because of evil type coercion. Does this still hold true for
>VB.NET, or does it not matter anymore? Does it make any difference if you're
>using Option Strict?

The "+" operator is the original "native" operator for concatenation.
the "&" was added when they introduced type coercion that allowed you
to mix numeric and string data types. This was bad practice in the
first place and I *strongly* recommend you avoid mixing types.

So long as you use straightforward expressions (don't mix data types),
the + operator is fine. Many of us still use it as our default (only)
concatenation operator.

Dan
Language Stability is a *feature* I wish VB had!
(#6)

"Jonathan Allen" <greywolf@cts.com> wrote in message news:3bbca21e@news.devx.com...
> Wish List: Option Sanity

You have my vote for that.

Jens