A structure and a multidimensional array have a lot in common in Visual Basic. Often, you can use either one and your program will work just as well either way. But there are some clear differences and understanding them will help you understand how to manage information inside a program.
A structure looks like this in VB.NET. (Note - All examples are in VB.NET. VB 6 uses the Type statement. Although the syntax changes quite a bit, the concepts are still the same.)
Note that a structure (in both VB 6 and VB.NET) is actually a new data type. Since you have to declare a variable as a datatype before you can use it in VB.NET, that's exactly what the code example does.
A multidimensional array looks like this in VB.NET.
This doesn't look anything like a structure and it's not a new datatype. It's actually just an alternative way of referencing data. Instead of using an array, you could get similar results by declaring a whole list of different variables:
Dim MultArray_0_0_0 as String
Dim MultArray_0_0_1 as String
Welllll ... not too similar. One of the advantages of arrays is that you can calculate the array index:
MultArray(Count * 4, CInt(Size / 28), IQ) = "About Visual Basic"
A disadvantage of most arrays is that you have to declare them to be the same datatype. Note that the structure in the example includes three datatypes. All of the elements of the array are strings. You can combine both, however, to get the advantages of both.
Dim MultArray(10) As Outer
MultArray(1).Inner1 = "About VB"
MultArray(1).Inner3 = Color.Blue
Structures can be very powerful and multilevel ways of organizing data. For example, it's possible to have a complex structure like this:
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