Constants and Enumerations (Visual Basic) Constants Conditional Compilation Constants Print and Display Constants Enumerations See also
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Constants and Enumerations (Visual Basic)
Visual Basic supplies a number of predefined constants and enumerations for developers. Constants store values that remain constant throughout the execution of an application. Enumerations provide a convenient way to work with sets of related constants, and to associate constant values with names.
Constants
Conditional Compilation Constants
The following table lists the predefined constants available for conditional compilation.
Constant
Description
CONFIG
A string that corresponds to the current setting of the Active Solution Configuration box in the Configuration Manager.
DEBUG
A Boolean value that can be set in the Project Properties dialog box. By default, the Debug configuration for a project defines DEBUG. When DEBUG is defined, Debug class methods generate output to the Output window. When it is not defined, Debug class methods are not compiled and no Debug output is generated.
TARGET
A string representing the output type for the project or the setting of the command-line -target option. The possible values of TARGET are:
- "winexe" for a Windows application.
- "exe" for a console application.
- "library" for a class library.
- "module" for a module.
- The -target option may be set in the Visual Studio integrated development environment. For more information, see -target (Visual Basic).
TRACE
A Boolean value that can be set in the Project Properties dialog box. By default, all configurations for a project define TRACE. When TRACE is defined, Trace class methods generate output to the Output window. When it is not defined, Trace class methods are not compiled and no Trace output is generated.
VBC_VER
A number representing the Visual Basic version, in major.minor format.
Print and Display Constants
When you call print and display functions, you can use the following constants in your code in place of the actual values.
Constant
Description
vbCrLf
Carriage return/linefeed character combination.
vbCr
Carriage return character.
vbLf
Linefeed character.
vbNewLine
Newline character.
vbNullChar
Null character.
vbNullString
Not the same as a zero-length string (""); used for calling external procedures.
vbObjectError
Error number. User-defined error numbers should be greater than this value. For example:
Err.Raise(Number) = vbObjectError + 1000
vbTab
Tab character.
vbBack
Backspace character.
vbFormFeed
Not used in Microsoft Windows.
vbVerticalTab
Not useful in Microsoft Windows.
Enumerations
The following table lists and describes the enumerations provided by Visual Basic.