Static Array
<%
' Let's start with our static array. Static doesn't mean you
' can't change the values of the elements. It simply means you
' can't change the number of elements in the array. The values
' of the elements themselves can change as often as they need to.
arrNames(0) = "Susan"
arrNames(1) = "Andy"
arrNames(2) = "Fred"
arrNames(3) = "Kelly"
' Notice that even though I used the number 3 to dimension the
' array there are indeed four elements which I can insert values
' into. This is because all arrays in VBScript are zero based
' meaning the first item has an index of zero. Geeks think in
' binary and like to be different... what can I say?
' Display what our array currently contains. I wrapped this into
' a subroutine since I'm doing it a lot. See the sub down at
' the bottom for implementation details.
ShowArrayInTable(arrNames)
' As I mentioned earlier... even with a static array I can
' reassign values if I need to. I'm going to set the value of
' the second element to the value of the first element
' overwriting the existing value... effectively changing "Andy"
' to "Susan." For good measure I'm also going to change the
' first element to "John" since I'm feeling left out.
arrNames(1) = arrNames(0)
arrNames(0) = "John"
' Here's what the array now contains:
ShowArrayInTable(arrNames)
%>
|
Dynamic Array
<%
' Now on to our dynamic array. Before I can use a dynamic array
' I need to tell it how many elements I want to be able to put
' into it. The ReDim command allows us to redimension an array
' to whatever size we need. I'm setting it to 2 elements so I
' use an upper bound of 1.
ReDim arrAges(1)
arrAges(0) = 15
arrAges(1) = 20
' Show what our array currently contains:
ShowArrayInTable(arrAges)
' Now I'm going to ReDim the array again just to illustrate. I
' want to keep the existing data so I include the Preserve
' command. If I didn't all the data already in the array would
' be lost. You can also ReDim to change the number of
' dimensions in a dynamic array, but that's a little beyond the
' scope of this basic intro so here goes the simple resize up
' to 4 elements...
ReDim Preserve arrAges(3)
' Add another value:
arrAges(2) = 25
arrAges(3) = 30
' Once again show what our array currently contains:
ShowArrayInTable(arrAges)
%>
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Array Using the Array Function
<%
' Now we come to an interesting point. Since all variables
' in VBScript are really variants, you can assign an array to
' a variable that wasn't originally defined as one!
arrColors = Array("red", "green", "blue")
' Show the values in our new array:
ShowArrayInTable(arrColors)
%>
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<%
' Takes a 1 dimensional array and simply spits out its values
' in a table format with a note saying how big the array is.
Sub ShowArrayInTable(ArrayToShow)
Dim I ' Simple Looping Var
Dim iArraySize ' Var to store array size
' If you want to know how big an array is, you can use this
' to find out. This even works in VB where they don't have
' to be zero-based. The LBound and UBound return the
' indecies of the lowest and highest array elements so to
' get the size we take the difference and add one since you
' can store a value at both end points.
iArraySize = (UBound(ArrayToShow) - LBound(ArrayToShow)) + 1
Response.Write "The array has " & iArraySize _
& " elements. They are:
" & vbCrLf
Response.Write "