Arrays of unknown length in Visual Basic

Question

I have a piece of code written in Visual Basic: ``` Dim n As Double, i As Integer n = 4 Dim Ramp_length(1 To 4) As Double For i = 1 To n Ramp_length(i) = Cells(13 + i, 5) 'Cells(65 + i, 7) = Ramp_length(i)' Next i ``` Is there a way I can reproduce the result without declaring the array with a "fixed" length? I eventually want the code to read off a column of data with unknown length and store it in an array of equal or smaller length so it can be altered. This is just a piece of the code...if someone could help me out that would be great! :D Thanks

Accepted Answer

You can use ReDim Preserve to resize an array. If you only need it a view times and don't use it in a loop, it's ok. But ReDim Preserve is very slow, because it creates a completely new array and copies the old values into it. If you need to fill an array up with an unknown amount of data sets, use a list. I made a small example:

```
Dim num_iterations as Integer

' redim solution
Dim dyn_array As Integer()
For i = 0 To num_iterations - 1
    ReDim Preserve dyn_array(i)
    dyn_array(i) = i
Next

' list solution
Dim list_for_array As New List(Of Integer)
For i = 0 To num_iterations - 1
    list_for_array.Add(i)
Next
Dim list_array As Integer() = list_for_array.ToArray
```

With 10000 iterations the ReDim-solution has a runtime of 32ms, the list solution is instantly ready (0 ms). 100000 iterations result in 5487ms using ReDim and 1ms using a list.

Arrays of unknown length in Visual Basic

Solution

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