Converting from UDT to structure or object - please help

[Clark Stevens]

I have a program that I'm converting from VB6 to VB.NET. It reads in a text
file containing barcode numbers and their corresponding descriptions. Then
the user enters the barcode number and the program finds the matching
barcode description.

In VB6 I used an UDT to store the barcode number along with the description.
Then I declared an array of the barcode UDT.

I'm thinking of converting the UDT to a structure in VB.NET and doing
something like this:

Structure BCStructure
BCNumber as Integer
BCDescription as String
End Structure

Public BC() as BCStructure

Is there a more efficient way to handle this in VB.NET? Should I setup a
barcode class and use an object collection instead? What are the
advantages/disadvantages?

All suggestions welcome

 

[Klaus H. Probst]

That's OK as long as you're not going to change the number of items in the
array, because .NET arrays are immutable.

But you can use an ArrayList, or a Hashtable or any of the other container
classes.

But your approach is pretty much there.

 

[Herfried K. Wagner [MVP]]

I have a program that I'm converting from VB6 to VB.NET. It reads in a text
file containing barcode numbers and their corresponding descriptions. Then
the user enters the barcode number and the program finds the matching
barcode description.

In VB6 I used an UDT to store the barcode number along with the description.
Then I declared an array of the barcode UDT.

I'm thinking of converting the UDT to a structure in VB.NET and doing
something like this:

Structure BCStructure
BCNumber as Integer
BCDescription as String
End Structure

Public BC() as BCStructure

Is there a more efficient way to handle this in VB.NET? Should I setup a
barcode class and use an object collection instead? What are the
advantages/disadvantages?

If that's a good solution depends on the number of barcodes. These days
we finished a project for university (written in Java :-() that was
connected to a barcode scanner to scan barcodes placed on walls. We
only had 10 barcodes in our sample, and there will never be more than
100 barcodes. So we simply used a text file containing the number
followed by a tab and followed by the description or a filename and
loaded it into an array/collection. Then we used linear search to find
the item.

Your records are very small, and if there are only few of them, using an
array is IMO a good solution. For string IDs, I would use a hashtable,
but that's not the case for simple barcode scanners. If there are lots
of items and managing them and searching is a complicated process, using
a database may be the better solution.

 

[Mike McIntyre [MVP]]

The article at the link below should be helpful.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchUseClassStruct.asp

--
Mike

Mike McIntyre
Visual Basic MVP
www.getdotnetcode.com

 

[Clark Stevens]

we finished a project for university (written in Java :-() that was
connected to a barcode scanner to scan barcodes placed on walls. We
only had 10 barcodes in our sample, and there will never be more than
100 barcodes. So we simply used a text file containing the number
followed by a tab and followed by the description or a filename and
loaded it into an array/collection. Then we used linear search to find
the item.

This program will be used with a barcode scanner as well. I don't
anticipate there being a lot of records, so it sounds like I am on the right
track here. I thank you, and everyone else who responded, for your help.
This newsgroup is great!