Scripters, you have been great help!
This time, though, I wonder if I got a tough one. Before going into details on
my problem, I want to just give a short note. For one reason, to make my point
more clear, and for another, because maybe not all on the list is aware of this
little turn-around.
If you have a message box (MsgBox) that needs to pressent more text, than what
can be read on one line, you have the option in a VBScript to 'split' the
instruction into several lines. That is, instead of writeing a line in your
script like:
MsgBox( "message 1" & VbCrLf & "Message 2" & VbCrLf & "Message 3" )
You can increase the readability of the script - without changing its
performance - by the folowing lines:
MsgBox( "Message 1 " & VbCrLf &_
"Message 2" & VbCrLf &_
"Message 3" )
Abit more easy to maintain the script, this way, ain't it? (btw, VbCrLf is a
predefined 'CarriageReturn/LineFeed' insruction, that I just happened to come
accross the knowledge of, the other day. Saved me a lot of instructions like
Chr(10) & Chr(13) - hope it helps others as well.)
OK, now over to my challenging problem. I am using Notepad for editing my
scripts. 1. I am familiar with that editor, 2. Use it all the time, and 3. a
handful other reasons.
In my scripting project, I decided to put some of the messages it use to inform
the user of its activity, into an array. A couple of good reasons for doing so.
First of all, you can easily access the same message, several places in the
script - without rewriting it everytime. Another good reason is, that you
easily can combine the different messages in the order/amount you want. And,
since I have the idea of making my script accessible in more than one language,
it is easy to edit the messages, for translation, since they are all gathered
in one place.
The result is, that my script would look like this:
'Snip code starts here:
Dim Infolines
Infolines = Array( "Welcome to", "my script", "You are now at the beginning",
"you are now at the end", "goodbye" )
MsgBox( Infolines(1) & VbCrLf &_
Infolines(2) & VbCrLf &_
Infolines(3) )
MsgBox( Infolines(2) & VbCrLf &_
Infolines(4) & VbCrLf &_
Infolines(5) )
'Snip ends here
You get the idea? Two screens will be displayed:
1. Welcome to
my script
you are at the beginning
2. My script
This is the end
goodbye
The challenging problem, that I ran into yesterday, and have found no work
around to, is that my Infolines array has got the length, that it doesn't fit
into one long line in Notepad. Hence, notepad makes the definition section in
my script look like:
dim Infolines
Infolines = Array( "Message 1", "Message 2", Message3", "Message
4", Message 5" )
And, of course, when trying to run the script, it complains about the last line
above, as it appears 'without a definition'.
My question is, does there exist a way to 'split' an array definition into
several lines? Something like the &_ instruction used in MsbBox calls and the
like? That way, I could have got my array definition to work. Notepad complaint
when the total line length got just under 600 characters. I have 40 entries in
the array, so you see, the 600 characters run fast... :)
Sorry for a long message, but if there would happen to be noe solution to my
problem, I still hope it gave a bit of ideas to other scripters. At least, I
have found great help in studying the 'snip codes' listers are including in
their messages.
Thanks for all feedback and workarounds, you can come up with.
