Parenthesis - to use or not to use?
 

Greetings all

Quick question - In John Green et al's Excel 2000 VBA I find the
following assertion: "The general rule is that if you want to capture
the return value of a function, you need to put any argument in
parenthesis. If you don't want to use the return value, you should not
use parenthesis."

The first sentence is of course a nonnegotiable point of syntax - but
what about the second sentence? I was under the impression that it is
100% a matter of taste if I write msgbox "Hello world" or
msgbox("Hello world"), but the word "should" above suggests that there
is a principled reason to drop parenthesis if not needed. Is there? In
particular, does the computer in some sense process a non-returned
value if you include parenthesis but not otherwise, so that a small
performance hit attaches itself to parenthesis? Also, what about sub
calls when there is no return value to worry about?
If it is just a matter of taste I'll stick to parenthesis since it
seems somehow more logical to me.

Thank you for your time.

-John Coleman

Parenthesis - to use or not to use?
 

I would say that if your subsequent code depends on a
response from the user, eg:
if msgbox ("Hello World?", vbquestion+vbyesno) = vbyes then
then you need to use parenthesis or you get a syntax
error, but if you are displaying the msgbox for
information purposes then they are not necessary.
eg
msgbox "Hello World", vbinformation

-----Original Message-----
Greetings all

Quick question - In John Green et al's Excel 2000 VBA I
find the
following assertion: "The general rule is that if you
want to capture
the return value of a function, you need to put any
argument in
parenthesis. If you don't want to use the return value,
you should not
use parenthesis."

The first sentence is of course a nonnegotiable point of
syntax - but
what about the second sentence? I was under the
impression that it is
100% a matter of taste if I write msgbox "Hello world" or
msgbox("Hello world"), but the word "should" above
suggests that there
is a principled reason to drop parenthesis if not needed.
Is there? In
particular, does the computer in some sense process a non-
returned
value if you include parenthesis but not otherwise, so
that a small
performance hit attaches itself to parenthesis? Also,
what about sub
calls when there is no return value to worry about?
If it is just a matter of taste I'll stick to parenthesis
since it
seems somehow more logical to me.

Thank you for your time.

-John Coleman
.

Parenthesis - to use or not to use?
 

John,

You, of course, can do what you want, but you should consider the future
readers of your code. If I am looking at code and see

MsgBox(.....

then I start looking for the return value and its use. Without the ( )s I
know that it is only being used for display purposes.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP

"John Coleman" wrote in message
om...
Greetings all

Quick question - In John Green et al's Excel 2000 VBA I find the
following assertion: "The general rule is that if you want to capture
the return value of a function, you need to put any argument in
parenthesis. If you don't want to use the return value, you should not
use parenthesis."

The first sentence is of course a nonnegotiable point of syntax - but
what about the second sentence? I was under the impression that it is
100% a matter of taste if I write msgbox "Hello world" or
msgbox("Hello world"), but the word "should" above suggests that there
is a principled reason to drop parenthesis if not needed. Is there? In
particular, does the computer in some sense process a non-returned
value if you include parenthesis but not otherwise, so that a small
performance hit attaches itself to parenthesis? Also, what about sub
calls when there is no return value to worry about?
If it is just a matter of taste I'll stick to parenthesis since it
seems somehow more logical to me.

Thank you for your time.

-John Coleman

Parenthesis - to use or not to use?
 

I believe MSGBOX was an example of using parenthesis and not the focus. In
the second paragraph read the last three sentences and you'll actually
understand the question at hand.
--
Toby Erkson
Oregon, USA
Excel 2002 in Windows XP

then I start looking for the return value and its use. Without the ( )s I
know that it is only being used for display purposes.

....
In
particular, does the computer in some sense process a non-returned
value if you include parenthesis but not otherwise, so that a small
performance hit attaches itself to parenthesis? Also, what about sub
calls when there is no return value to worry about?

Parenthesis - to use or not to use?
 

Thanks to everyone for their replies. I figured out on the nature of
my error. For my own subroutines I always call them using the call
keyword, in which parenthesis are required. I pretty much use message
boxes only for debugging purposes, and with 1 parameter () are
ignored. A little experimentation shows that 2 or more parameters with
() as I have been doing leads to problems.

My way to think about it now - msgbox( , , ..) is a noun that must be
embedded in a bigger context to make sense, but in msgbox "hello
world" msgbox is now functioning as a verb.

In my defense - when I type msgbox in the VBA editor the IntelliSense
which pops up suggests (), and sinse my code was compiling no-problem
I didn't realize I was being ungrammatical. It is strange how you can
misunderstand a basic feature of a language but nevertheless get by
with your own idiosyncratic work-arounds.

sub thanks()
MsgBox Prompt := "Now I understand", Title:= "Thanks again"
end sub

-John Coleman