Is it possible to declare a dynamic constant in VB .NET?

Question

I'm trying to save a timestamp into a constant at the beginning of a program's execution to be used throughout the program. For example: ``` Const TIME_STAMP = Format(Now(), "hhmm") ``` However, this code generates a compiler error - "Constant expression is required." Does that mean all constants in VB .NET have to contain flat, static, hard-coded data? I know that it's possible to initialize a constant with a dynamic value in other languages (such as Java) - what makes it a constant is that after the initial assignment you can no longer change it. Is there an equivalent in VB .NET?

Accepted Answer

What you are looking for is the readonly keyword. A time stamp has to be calculated at run time and cannot be constant.

```
ReadOnly TIME_STAMP As String = Format(Now(), "hhmm")
```

Is it possible to declare a dynamic constant in VB .NET?

Solution

Problem