INFO: What Do eVB/VBCE Have That Visual Basic Doesn't Have?

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Control Differences

The controls used in eVB and VBCE are not the same as those used in regular Visual Basic and are not interchangeable. They are specifically designed for the Windows CE operating system.

• The ScrollBar control is a combination of the horizontal and vertical scrollbars in regular Visual Basic. Properties are used to specify horizontal or vertical orientation.
• The File System Control contains two classes: File and FileSystem. The File object allows for file creation, input, and output. The FileSystem object allows for file and directory management.
• The Financial Control (Finance.DLL) replaces the financial functions that are intrinsic to regular Visual Basic. All of the financial functions available in regular Visual Basic are provided as methods of the Financial object.

Function Differences

• Formatting functions. Instead of the generic Format() function, eVB and VBCE provide dedicated formatting functions for specific data: FormatCurrency(), FormatDateTime(), FormatNumber(), and FormatPercent().
• String functions. Several very useful new string manipulation functions are included for use in Windows CE:
  
  
  • Filter() - returns a zero-based array containing a subset of a string array based on a specified filter criteria.
    
    
  • InStrRev() - provides similar information about strings as InStr, but it provides the position from the right. The standard InStr() is also available.
    
    
  • Join() - returns a string created by joining a number of substrings contained in an array.
    
    
  • Split() - returns a zero-based, one-dimensional array containing a specified number of substrings.
    
    
  • StrReverse() - returns a string in which the character order of a specified string is reversed.
• Round() returns a number rounded to a specified number of decimal places.
• WeekDayName() returns a string indicating the specified day of the week.

Miscellaneous

• The App object has an End method. It has the same functionality as (and is used within eVB and VBCE in lieu of) the End statement in regular Visual Basic.
• The PointSet method replaces PSet to set the color of a specified point on a Form. PointSet does not support the Step optional parameter of PSet.
• The SetScale method replaces Scale to define the coordinate system for a Form.
• Because eVB and VBCE rely heavily on the VBScript Engine, there are several functions that provide useful information about the engine:
  
  
  • ScriptEngine() - function returns a string representing the scripting language in use.
    
    
  • ScriptEngineBuildVersion() - function returns the build version number of the script engine in use.
    
    
  • ScriptEngineMajorVersion() - function returns the major version number of the script engine in use.
    
    
  • ScriptEngineMinorVersion() - function returns the minor version number of the script engine in use.