Question

I’m trying to return a dictionary from a function. I believe the function is working correctly, but I’m not sure how to utilize the returned dictionary.

Here is the relevant part of my function:

Function GetSomeStuff()   '   ' Get a recordset...   '    Dim stuff   Set stuff = CreateObject('Scripting.Dictionary')   rs.MoveFirst   Do Until rs.EOF     stuff.Add rs.Fields('FieldA').Value, rs.Fields('FieldB').Value     rs.MoveNext   Loop    GetSomeStuff = stuff End Function 

How do I call this function and use the returned dictionary?

EDIT: I’ve tried this:

Dim someStuff someStuff = GetSomeStuff 

and

Dim someStuff Set someStuff = GetSomeStuff 

When I try to access someStuff, I get an error:

Microsoft VBScript runtime error: Object required: 'GetSomeStuff' 

EDIT 2: Trying this in the function:

Set GetSomeStuff = stuff 

Results in this error:

Microsoft VBScript runtime error: Wrong number of arguments or invalid property assignment. 

Answer 1

I wasn’t too sure of what was your problem, so I experimented a bit.

It appears that you just missed that to assign a reference to an object, you have to use set, even for a return value:

Function GetSomeStuff   Dim stuff   Set stuff = CreateObject('Scripting.Dictionary')     stuff.Add 'A', 'Anaconda'     stuff.Add 'B', 'Boa'     stuff.Add 'C', 'Cobra'    Set GetSomeStuff = stuff End Function  Set d = GetSomeStuff Wscript.Echo d.Item('A') Wscript.Echo d.Exists('B') items = d.Items For i = 0 To UBound(items)   Wscript.Echo items(i) Next