Passing Arguments

[ktschultz92]

Very beginner question: what does it mean to "pass arguments"?

 

[dreid1011]

Very beginner question: what does it mean to "pass arguments"?

It means you can use the result of one function as an argument in another function.

Ie: Function A performs some calculation and returns it's result. Sometimes you want this to run all by itself.

Now, you add Function B that does some other calculation, you can pass the result of Function A to Function B so it can run different calculations.

Of course, this is not limited to just numerical arguments.

Or, you have a sub with some variables, and you have Function A that performs some calculation. The sub can define it's variables and then pass those values to Function A if called from the sub and use those values for it's purposes.

 

[StephenCrump]

In addition to dreid1011's comments, I'd also note that you are passing arguments when you call most Excel functions.

For example, in the formula: =MAX(A1,B1) you are passing two range arguments to the MAX function.

If you look at Excel's Help for the MAX function, you'll see the syntax is MAX(number1, [number2], ...), and there are rules applied to the arguments number1, number2, ... etc, i.e.

- number1 is required, number2 ... number 255 are optional.
- Arguments can be numbers, names, arrays or range references containing numbers.

If you start coding with VBA, you can create your own customised functions that might need particular arguments. So when your code calls these functions, you will pass the arguments that you want the function to use, i.e. in the same way you call the MAX function in Excel with the arguments you want used.

 

[ktschultz92]

Thank you both! That makes much more sense!