Question

Right – to start with, I’m entering unfamiliar areas with this – so please be kind!

I have a script that looks a little something like this:

Private Function checkString(ByVal strIn As String) As String
    Dim astrWords As String() = New String() {"bak", "log", "dfd"}
    Dim strOut As String = ""
    Dim strWord As String
    For Each strWord In astrWords
        If strIn.ToLower.IndexOf(strWord.ToLower, 0) >= 0 Then
            strOut = strWord.ToLower
            Exit For
        End If
    Next
    Return strOut
End Function

It’s function is to check the input string and see if any of those ‘astrWords’ are in there and then return the value.

So I wrote a bit of code to dynamically create those words that goes something like this:

Dim extensionArray As String = ""
    Dim count As Integer = 0
    For Each item In lstExtentions.Items
        If count = 0 Then
            extensionArray = extensionArray & """." & item & """"
        Else
            extensionArray = extensionArray & ", ""." & item & """"
        End If
        count = count + 1
    Next
    My.Settings.extensionArray = extensionArray
    My.Settings.Save()

Obviously – it’s creating that same array using list items. The output of that code is exactly the same as if I hard coded it – but when I change the first bit of code to:
Dim astrWords As String() = New String() {My.Settings.extensionArray}
instead of:
Dim astrWords As String() = New String() {“bak”, “log”, “dfd”}
It starts looking for the whole statement instead of looping through each individual one?

I think it has something to do with having brackets on the end of the word string – but I’m lost!

Any help appreciated 🙂

Answer 1

When you use the string from the settings in the literal array, it’s just as if you used a single strings containing the delimited strings:

Dim astrWords As String() = New String() {"""bak"", ""log"", ""dfd"""}

What you probably want to do is to put a comma separated string like "bak,log,dfd" in the settings, then you can split it to get it as an array:

Dim astrWords As String() = My.Settings.extensionArray.Split(","C)