Extending VBA language for the easy output of expressions

[ghost]

Hello.

Me & Rubberduck

I've just been browsing your pages on Rubberduck and it looks like a very useful tool. I'll probably try it out one day.

What I would like to do

I've just been thinking today that it would be good if I could more easily code statements like the following in the VBE:

Debug.Print "MyVar : " & MyVar
Debug.Print "MyObject.MyProperty(3) : " & MyObject.MyProperty(3)
Debug.Print "MyObject![Color] : " & MyObject![Color]
Debug.Print "MyVar : " & MyVar & vbCrLf & _
            "MyObject.MyProperty(3) : " & MyObject.MyProperty(3) & vbCrLf & _
            "MyObject![Color] : " & MyObject![Color]
Debug.Print "MyVar : " & MyVar & "; " & _
            "MyObject.MyProperty(3) : " & MyObject.MyProperty(3)

Sometimes, instead of Debug.Print, I use MsgBox.

I find myself running such statements quite often for debugging & code-checking purposes. They're not so easy to read even though they all follow very standard forms.

Ideas for how to do it.

I've been trying to figure out how I can write such statements using a simpler form. I've figured out a way to do it using source-code rewriting but I'm not so keen on it as if others were to use it, they would have to trust that the rewriting code wouldn't do anything nasty to their source code. Also, the rewritten code still has a relatively 'ugly' form similar to that shown above.

Interfere with compiled p-code?

I then thought it probably would be best if I could interfere with the p-code generated through compilation whilst at the same time leaving the actual source code unchanged, but I have no idea where to start with this.

VBE's ? <varname> syntax

I notice that if you write ? MyVar in the code pane of VBE, it oddly rewrites the code as Print MyVar which the compiler or runtime won't accept. I'm wondering whether the VBE developers meant for the code to rewrite to Debug.Print instead.

Anyway, if I could implement such an automated rewrite that happened straight-away after the line was entered, I think this would be an acceptable solution.

Is Rubberduck relevant?

Are any of these things, things that Rubberduck could be geared up to handle? I had a look through past Rubberduck GitHub issues to see whether there were any existing issues related to this issue, but couldn't find anything. If Rubberduck isn't geared up to handle such things could you tell me if I coded something up to do what I'm suggesting, would I be able to submit such code to the Rubberduck project such that it might be beneficially used in Rubberduck some time in the future?

Thanks.

[retailcoder]

? as a shortcut to Print worked in BASIC 2.0 on my old Commodore 64! 😀 ...and then there's the whole "but where is this Debug object coming from anyway?" thing (looks like it's special-cased at the language/parser level), but I digress... I think it wouldn't be unreasonable to have an "autocorrect" feature that turns ? into Debug.Print as you type it, when that's the only thing in the current line of code being edited: similar "autocorrect" ideas are very much in-scope for the project.

Do you know about the VBE's Locals toolwindow? IMO combined with judiciously placed breakpoints, it's a much more appropriate tool for debugging and inspecting local variables' values, at least in most cases I can think of.

That said Rubberduck's "smart concat" and "self-closing pairs" completion would probably make it a little easier to type statements like these, by automating the closing of double quotes, the line continuations, and the & vbNewLine concatenations.

Other than that, given the Locals toolwindow, I'm not convinced further enabling debug-outputting is something we should be looking into.

That said, we absolutely welcome pull requests that address open issues!

[retailcoder]

@MarkFern BTW sorry for basically derailing your docs PR the other day... and thanks for your contributions to the VBA landscape!

I'll probably try it out one day.

Awesome! Let us know when you do, and don't hesitate to ask anything!

[ghost]

Off-topic

@retailcoder, don't worry about your PR comments the other day. Actually, @Linda-Editor and I are planning on changing the text again to 'grammatical element'. If you hadn't added your input regarding the definition of 'token', I likely wouldn't have thought of this. Might even in the end write 'token' in some way to improve the content.

Locals window & watch window

I've only very recently learnt about the existence of the locals window. It looks interesting & I'll probably try using it. I've used the watch window quite a bit which I think might be similar. Two disadvantages I find with the watch window is that it doesn't show a value history, & when the immediate window is displayed next to it, it seems to be often too compact for me. Also, you can't add a commentary to the values which I find I can do with Debug.Print statements. For example, I can write the following that adds commentary to the outputting of expressions:

Debug.Print "Object has been created. Token has been received."
Debug.Print "MyFlag = " & MyFlag 

However, I understand that perhaps using the locals window & the watch window, in conjunction with judicious use of breakpoints, could be sufficient. Perhaps I just need to improve the ways I check for code correction & debug code.

Autocorrect "?" to "Debug.Print" (issue #4933)

Glad to see that my earlier comment has resulted in a new feature request.

Thanks.