Glad somebody was brave enough to ask. It seems like reasonable code to me, too. There are better ways to do it in other languages, but if you're writing in VB, you have to live with the limitations that implies. (In Perl I'd either use DateTime or make it a hash lookup.)

A hash lookup? Why not an array? Anyway, i wouldnt have laughed so hard if it had been written something like the following:

Public Function GetMonthName(ByVal m As Long, _
    Optional ByVal abbr As Boolean = False) As String


    Static Months(12) As String
    If (Months(1) <> "January") Then
        Months(1) = "January"
        Months(2) = "February"
        Months(3) = "March"
        Months(4) = "April"
        Months(5) = "May"
        Months(6) = "June"
        Months(7) = "July"
        Months(8) = "August"
        Months(9) = "September"
        Months(10) = "October"
        Months(11) = "November"
        Months(12) = "December"
    End If
    
   Dim tmp As String

   If (m >= 1 And m <= 12) Then
        tmp = Months(m)
   Else
        tmp = Format(m, "0")
   End If

   If abbr Then
      GetMonthName = Left(tmp, 3)
   Else
      GetMonthName = tmp
   End If

End Function
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---
demerphq


First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
-- Gandhi

Flux8

An array would work just fine in this case. For things like this, I tend to automatically (for better or for worse) reach for a hash, as I usually need to do the lookup based on a string.

Even so, I don't think the orginal VB code is so bad. The switch statement is probably going to be O(n) (since it can't optimize down to a jump like C's less flexible switch statement can), but the search space is so small that it won't matter much.

I do wonder, though, if this function should be public. If the application is properly OO, this is the sort of detail that should probably be hidden away. I'd have to know more about the overall application to be sure, though.

"There is no shame in being self-taught, only in not trying to learn in the first place." -- Atrus, Myst: The Book of D'ni.

I thought you were laughing because he used Format(m,"0") in his CASE ELSE statement, while Format(date,"mmm") or Format(date,"mmmm") would have given him the results he was looking for in the first place.

An array lookup would work, too.

Actually, there's a pretty nifty native way to do this. Probably less efficient than a hash lookup, but more consistent.

Function MyMonthName(ByVal m As Long, Optional ByVal appr As Boolean =
+ False) As String
   Dim v
   v = CDate("2004-" & m & "-01")

   Dim fmt As String
   If appr Then
      fmt = "MMM"
   Else
      fmt = "MMMM"
   End If

   MyMonthName = Format(v, fmt)
End Function
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