Microsoft® Visual Basic® Scripting Edition Private Statement

Language Reference

See Also

Description

Used at script level to declare private variables and allocate storage space.

Syntax

Private varname[([subscripts])][, varname[([subscripts])]] . . .

The Private statement syntax has these parts:

Part	Description
varname	Name of the variable; follows standard variable naming conventions.
subscripts	Dimensions of an array variable; up to 60 multiple dimensions may be declared. The subscripts argument uses the following syntax: upper [, upper] . . . The lower bound of an array is always zero.

Remarks

Private variables are available only to the script in which they are declared.

A variable that refers to an object must be assigned an existing object using the Set statement before it can be used. Until it is assigned an object, the declared object variable has the special value Nothing.

You can also use the Private statement with empty parentheses to declare a dynamic array. After declaring a dynamic array, use the ReDim statement within a procedure to define the number of dimensions and elements in the array. If you try to redeclare a dimension for an array variable whose size was explicitly specified in a Private, Public, or Dim statement, an error occurs.

When variables are initialized, a numeric variable is initialized to 0 and a string is initialized to a zero-length string ("").

Tip  When you use the Private statement in a procedure, it is a generally accepted programming practice to put the Private statement at the beginning of the procedure.