Question

I have defined a variable with an own type, say

Dim point As DataPoint

Public Type DataPoint
   list as Collection
   name as String
   number as Integer
End Type

and I want to delete all values of the variable point at once. If it was a class, I would just use Set point = New DataPoint, or set Set point = Nothing, but how can I proceed if it’s a type?

Answer 1

The standard way is to reset each member to its default value individually. This is one limitation of user-defined types compared to objects.

At the risk of stating the obvious:

With point
    Set .list = Nothing
    .name = ""
    .number = 0
End With

Alternatively, you can create a “blank” variable and assign it to your variable each time you want to “clear” it.

Dim point As DataPoint
Dim blank As DataPoint

With point
    Set .list = New Collection
    .list.Add "carrots"
    .name = "joe"
    .number = 12
End With

point = blank 
' point members are now reset to default values