VBA long or string byte-wise?

[Dimitris254]

i'm retrieving the cell color in a spreadsheet and assign it to a variable, then use the variable to color another cell.

color_1 = .Cells.Find(what:="mycell", LookIn:=xlValues, lookat:=xlWhole, SearchOrder:=xlByColumns).Interior.Color

.Cells(1, "A").Interior.Color = color_1

The code will work regardless if color_1 is Long or String (the color number is something like 10587882).

So, byte-wise, which one is smaller?

 

[SpillerBD]

I believe it would be Long.
A String could hold both more characters each character a full 32-bit word.
Long would be 1 32-bit word.
(or 64-bit word , either way same concept.)

 

[Dimitris254]

erm... that means that each character in a string is 32-bit? while a long variable is 32-bit?

 

[Rick Rothstein]

i'm retrieving the cell color in a spreadsheet and assign it to a variable, then use the variable to color another cell.

color_1 = .Cells.Find(what:="mycell", LookIn:=xlValues, lookat:=xlWhole, SearchOrder:=xlByColumns).Interior.Color

.Cells(1, "A").Interior.Color = color_1

The code will work regardless if color_1 is Long or String (the color number is something like 10587882).

So, byte-wise, which one is smaller?

It is not so much the byte size that matters (you have way more RAM than you could ever clog up with whichever is longer), rather, you should use Long because that is what the Color value is... if you use String, then VB has to waste execution cycles coercing the String value to a Long value in order to use it (and it would have to do that every time you used the variable in code if declared as a String). You should always make the variable declaration of the same type as the data that will be placed into it.

 

[Dimitris254]

this covers me 100%