XL: Square Bracket Notation Is Less Efficient Than Tunneling

• Microsoft Excel for Windows, versions 5.0, 5.0c
• Microsoft Excel for the Macintosh, versions 5.0, 5.0a
• Microsoft Excel for Windows NT, version 5.0
• Microsoft Excel for Windows 95, versions 7.0, 7.0a
• Microsoft Excel 97 for Windows

SUMMARY

In the Microsoft Excel Visual Basic Programming System, Applications Edition (Visual Basic), you can use square bracket notation in some instances as an alternative to tunneling. For example, you could use [A1] instead of Range("A1") or [Sheet1!A1] instead of Sheets("Sheet1").Range("A1"). Using this abbreviated notation may take less time to enter as part of your procedure, but it takes longer to evaluate these statements at run-time. In addition, it is less flexible since you can't use variable names inside the square brackets.

MORE INFORMATION

Visual Basic goes through the following steps when it evaluates statements that use square bracket notation:

1. Determines if the content is a module name.

2. Determines if the content contains a range or object.

3. Calls the EVAL() function which evaluates the contents as though it were a cell.