VB .NET Language in a Nutshell

Name

VarType Function

Class

Microsoft.VisualBasic.Information

Syntax

VarType(varname)

varname

Use: Required

Data Type: Any

The name of a variable

Return Value

A member of the VariantType enumeration indicating the variable type

Description

Determines the data type of a variable

Rules at a Glance

• The possible values returned by the function include the following members of the VariantType enumeration.

  Constant	Value	Description
  Array	8192	Array
  Boolean	11	Boolean data type
  Byte	17	Byte data type
  Char	18	Char data type
  Date	7	Date data type
  Decimal	14	Decimal data type
  Double	5	Double data type
  Integer	3	Integer data type
  Long	20	Long data type
  Object	9	Object, uninitialized string, uninitialized array, object of a specific type
  Short	2	Short data type
  Single	4	Single data type
  String	8	String
  UserDefinedType	36	A structure

• If varname is a dimensioned array, the VarType function returns VariantType.Array (8192), plus the value of the array’s data type. For example, an array of strings returns 8192 + 8 = 8200. You can test for an array with a code fragment such as the following:

  If VarType(myVar) And VariantType.Array Then

• You can extract the data type of the array with the following code fragment:

  vartype(myVar) and &HFFFFDFFF

• All object variables, whether late-bound or early-bound, return VariantType.Object.

• Data types that are members of the base class library but are not wrapped by VB data types (i.e., UINT16, UINT32, ...