Question

I’m trying to create a routine that replaces a variable number of values within a given string. For example, if I have a base text in the spreadsheet of:

“Your vehicle selection of {0} indicates you should have between {1} and {2} tires. However, you have entered {3} tires for this vehicle. Please update the record accordingly.”

I would like to replace the tokens with either a constant value from the application or some other variable a user entered. I’m trying to create a routine with a signature such as the following, where RowID is the row in the spreadsheet where the base text is located and ReplacementValues is an array of n number of variables:

Sub ShowMsg(ByVal RowID As Integer, Optional ByVal ReplacementValues As Variant)

I can’t figure out how to loop through the text and replace each token without repeating the entire text of the base message in each iteration. If possible I would like to keep the routine fairly generic and not specific to Excel in case I need to move the application to a database at some point later.

Hope I have explained this sufficiently; any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can;

Sub ShowMsg(ByVal RowID As Integer, Optional ReplacementValues As Variant)
Dim data As String, i As Long
If Not IsMissing(ReplacementValues) Then
    data = Range("A" & RowID).Value
    For i = 0 To UBound(ReplacementValues)
        data = Replace(data, "{" & i & "}", ReplacementValues(i))
    Next
    msgbox data
End If
End Sub

called with;

Dim a() As Variant: a = Array("aa", "bb", "cc")
ShowMsg 8, a

Or an alternative:

Sub ShowMsg(ByVal RowID As Integer, ParamArray ReplacementValues() As Variant)
Dim data As String, i As Long
If Not IsMissing(ReplacementValues) Then
    data = Range("A" & RowID).Value
    If IsArray(ReplacementValues(0)) Then ReplacementValues = ReplacementValues(0)
    For i = 0 To UBound(ReplacementValues)
        data = Replace(data, "{" & i & "}", ReplacementValues(i))
    Next
    msgbox data
End If
End Sub

which can be called in the same way or additionally with ordinal arguments;

ShowMsg 8, "aa", "bb", "cc"