VBA Single-Lettered Variables

[Vathana]

Hello all.

Weird question? But is it safe to name variables with one letter only (A to Z)? I've seen "I" and "J" often in examples on the webs and used those myself too, but I'm afraid ones of the letters are VBA keywords.

Thanks.

 

[mole999]

no problem I am aware of using the single, often use n for counts myself

 

[RoryA]

It's quite safe. There are no 1 letter keywords in VBA.

 

[Fluff]

Whilst I do tend to use single letter variables for loop counters, I would generally advise against use them.
The main reason reason being it can be very difficult to find them. For instance if you have a variable called e, try doing a search for e & you will get a lot of responses for Range, resize, offset, value etc etc.

 

[RoryA]

Unless you use the 'find whole word only' option.

 

[Fluff]

Never even new that existed.

 

[Vathana]

Wow thank you all for the information

 

[Fluff]

Glad we could help & thanks for the feedback.

 

[Eric W]

The first computer language I learned was FORTRAN. In FORTRAN, there is a design feature where any variable starting with the letters I through N is an integer, and variables starting with anything else are floating point. So I and J were often used as loop counters. The next language I learned was BASIC, and the convention carried over for me. I try to avoid a lower case L though, since it's easily confused with a 1 or an i. I keep thinking, like Fluff, that an actual name like Counter1, or RowCounter, would be better, but habits are hard to break. I do use r for row and c for column sometimes. But I see a lot of other code floating around where i and j are used as loop counters, and I've wondered how that happened. I rather doubt that my FORTRAN experience applies to that many people.

 

[Joe4]

The first computer language I learned was FORTRAN. In FORTRAN, there is a design feature where any variable starting with the letters I through N is an integer, and variables starting with anything else are floating point. So I and J were often used as loop counters. The next language I learned was BASIC, and the convention carried over for me. I try to avoid a lower case L though, since it's easily confused with a 1 or an i. I keep thinking, like Fluff, that an actual name like Counter1, or RowCounter, would be better, but habits are hard to break. I do use r for row and c for column sometimes. But I see a lot of other code floating around where i and j are used as loop counters, and I've wondered how that happened. I rather doubt that my FORTRAN experience applies to that many people.

You solved one the great mysteries of programming (at least for me)! I often seen people use "i and j" for loop counters, so much so that I started using it myself. But I never knew why or how that came about (never really thought much about it before now, to be honest). It is interesting to hear the genesis of that.

I never programmed in Fortran. The first language I learned in school was BASIC.