Whats better to SHARED or not

[doppler]

I don't really understand your problem description, but in general, local variables are preferable to global ones in every respect. In general, but sometimes one can't avoid it.

GoSub is one of those things... The QBasic/QuickBasic reference says that this is only supported for compatibility reasons, but it is not recommended.

Yeah, gosub is one of those hallmarks of spaghetti code that I completely avoid!

I got the same aversion about GOTO.  It's the sauce in spaghetti code "Once you use it hard to control where it goes, or gets used."  I basically try to only use it as a way at the bottom of code to get to the top.  I avoid for/next, in favor of do/loops.  In a do/loop I can use loop exit, instead of another goto.

[DSMan195276]

Sort of what I expected.  Better to ask before tripping over a landmine of problems.  I have fallen for the undeclared shared variable, only to see it as a local to the sub only.  Wondering why nothing happen after the sub call.

Thanks all around.

It's unrelated to the Shared/local discussion, but this problem can be solved by using `Option _Explicit`. It forces you to declare every variable, that way if you didn't declare a variable shared but also didn't declare it locally then you'll get an error at build time.

[vince]

global variables are reserved for either inexperienced, lazy, or really advanced programmers -- stick to the middle of the pack for the safer bet

[Kernelpanic]

@doppler - I got the same aversion about GOTO.

Sometimes GoTo is really OK, otherwise you would have to use a more complex loop. I posted something about this a while ago. The original is: Debugging the Software Development Process. It contains a good example of GoTo.

The random generator with GoTo:

Code: (Select All)

FalscheEingabe:

Print

Input "Anzahl der Zufallsnummern (Max 10): ", anzahlNummern

If anzahlNummern > 10 Then

  Beep: Print "Maximal 10 Nummern!"

  Sleep 2

  'System

  Cls

  GoTo FalscheEingabe

End If

[SpriggsySpriggs]

Sharing is for commie pinkos.

[Pete]

Consider using TYPE for variables, unless you are working with mostly arrays. Very easy to pass typed variables instead of adding each variable to the sub or function call. Personally, I got tired of looking at sub calls with 20+ passed variables. Using TYPE solved that clutter situation, nicely.

I used to do all global variables, to save memory, back in the 1990's. To make things even more difficult, the names had to be very short to save memory, too. Most of mine were just 1 or 2 characters. Still, I managed to get a 250 K multi-modular routine running that way, so I'm not one to knock the value of global variables. They can work, but now that name length isn't an issue, I'd probably use some underscore system to identify what routine it was involved in like cnt_keyboard%, for example.

Pete

Okay, had to come back to edit in @SpriggsySpriggs. That comment cracked me up!

[madscijr]

global variables are reserved for either inexperienced, lazy, or really advanced programmers -- stick to the middle of the pack for the safer bet

Global variables work for me, but I make sure to name them in such a way that identifies them as global - ie g_MyVar or m_MyVar (in VBA, the m is for module, as in variables common to the current module). 

But any routines I expect to be truly portable can't rely on global variables, their values are passed via parameters.

[TempodiBasic]

global variables are reserved for either inexperienced, lazy, or really advanced programmers -- stick to the middle of the pack for the safer bet

LOL
global variables are like GOTOs, GOSUB and DEF FNMyFunction!
Only the worse and the best of coders use them!
Do you have a Function that can distinguish between the first and the second type of coder?
It would be interesting...

Well
I post this picture for remembering the field of existence of variables and how to work with them (find, see, read, modify etc)

In BASIC we have keywords like COMMON, DIM (REDIM) SHARED,  SHARED for declaring variables visible from different levels of code.
There is something like this way to share variable also in other programming languages?