Erase Statement

Description

Reinitializes the elements of fixed-size arrays and deallocates dynamic-array storage space.

Syntax

Erase arraylist

The arraylist argument is one or more comma-delimited array variables to be erased.

Remarks

It is important to know whether an array is fixed-size (ordinary) or dynamic because Erase behaves differently depending on the type of array. No memory is recovered for fixed-size arrays. Erase sets the elements of a fixed array as follows:

Type of array	Effect of Erase on fixed-array elements

Fixed numeric array	Sets each element to zero.
Fixed string array (variable length)	Sets each element to zero-length ("").
Fixed string array (fixed length)	Sets each element to zero.
Fixed Variant array	Sets each element to Empty.
Array of user-defined types	Sets each element as if it were a separate variable.
Array of objects	Sets each element to the special value Nothing.

Erase frees the memory used by dynamic arrays. Before your program can refer to the dynamic array again, it must redeclare the array variable's dimensions using a ReDim statement.

See Also

Array Function, Dim Statement, Private Statement, Public Statement, ReDim Statement, Static Statement.

Example

This example uses the Erase statement to reinitialize the elements of fixed-size arrays and deallocate dynamic-array storage space.

' Declare array variables.
Dim NumArray(10) As Integer    ' Integer array.
Dim StrVarArray(10) As String    ' Variable-string array.
Dim StrFixArray(10) As String * 10    ' Fixed-string array.
Dim VarArray(10) As Variant    ' Variant array.
Dim DynamicArray() As Integer    ' Dynamic array.
ReDim DynamicArray(10)    ' Allocate storage space.
Erase NumArray    ' Each element set to 0.
Erase StrVarArray    ' Each element set to "".    
Erase StrFixArray    ' Each element set to 0.
Erase VarArray    ' Each element set to Empty.
Erase DynamicArray    ' Free memory used by array.