Question

One answer is to create a new array that is one element shorter. Are there any other simpler ways to do this?

Answer 1

Here is one way to remove the first element of an array in vb.net.

dim a(n)
...
for i = 1 to ubound(a)
  a(i-1) = a(i)
  next i
redim preserve a(ubound(a)-1)

You could make a function for this to remove an arbitrary element of an array (Have a parameter for the initial value of the for loop).