What does the compile debug option do?

[DG]

I have Office 2003 w/ visual basic 6.3. In visual basic if you click the
debug menu option the first option is Compile VBAProject. What does it do?
I click it and nothing happens. In fact it get greyed out. If it will make
my programs faster then how do I use it?

Dan

 

[Joel]

The compile option just reports errors. You will get the same errors if you
execute the code. I run the compile option when I have long programs that
are not ready to run, but I want to get rid of the errors.

There are three levels of error checking in VBA. The first are syntax
errors on individual lines which get reported when you type. The second type
are the compile errors such as an IF statement without an end. The third
type are the run errors.

The second type only gets reported when you compile the code or when you
start to execute the code. VBA automatically performs the compile feature
before running the code.

 

[Chip Pearson]

VBA code is never stored in the text format that you typed in. Instead, it
is stored as a series of byte codes called OpCodes (conceptually similar to
the way Java works). These are platform and version independent. In order to
by read and run by the VBA run-time interpreter, these OpCodes must be
translated to platform and version specific codes called ExCodes. That is
what Compile actually does, create ExCodes from OpCodes.


--
Cordially,
Chip Pearson
Microsoft MVP - Excel, 10 Years
Pearson Software Consulting
www.cpearson.com
(email on the web site)