Optional Arguments in VBScript

Introduction:
A frequently asked question about VBScript is "How can I make an argument of a Function or Sub optional?" and matter of factly, it's been answered on ASPFAQs.com at http://www.aspfaqs.com/aspfaqs/ShowFAQ.asp?FAQID=42. The answer to this question? VBScript does not support optional arguments, however, JScript does and the FAQ shows an example of this in JScript.

To circumvent this VBScript limitation, I will show you a technique that can be used to simulate optional arguments in VBScript that I call the Array-based approach. I'll also demonstrate the more widely accepted NULL-checking approach.

Using the Array-Based Approach
To see how to use the array-based approach for creating subroutines with optional arguments, let's start by an example subroutine:

Sub mySubRoutine(rArgs) 'Declare local variables Dim v1,v2,v3,v4 'Initialize the local variables (assign 'them all to empty strings v1 = "" : v2 = "" : v3 = "" : v4 = "" Select Case UBound(rArgs) Case 0 v1 = rArgs(0) Case 1 v1 = rArgs(0) v2 = rArgs(1) Case 2 v1 = rArgs(0) v2 = rArgs(1) v3 = rArgs(2) Case 3 v1 = rArgs(0) v2 = rArgs(1) v3 = rArgs(2) v4 = rArgs(3) End Select Response.Write "v1 = " & v1 & "<br>" Response.Write "v2 = " & v2 & "<br>" Response.Write "v3 = " & v3 & "<br>" Response.Write "v4 = " & v4 & "<br>" End Sub

Notice in the subroutine declaration, we've only defined one argument, rArgs:

Sub mySubRoutine(rArgs)

The argument rArgs will be an array of values we would like to pass into our subroutine. The next few lines declare our local variables and initializes them to default values (empty strings, in this case). Next, we use the UBound() function to determine the number of arguments passed. Then assign the array elements to the local variables:

Select Case UBound(rArgs) Case 0 v1 = rArgs(0) Case 1 v1 = rArgs(0) v2 = rArgs(1) Case 2 v1 = rArgs(0) v2 = rArgs(1) v3 = rArgs(2) Case 3 v1 = rArgs(0) v2 = rArgs(1) v3 = rArgs(2) v4 = rArgs(3) End Select

Since the array is zero-based, our first Case branch assigns the first element to our v1 variable. As we need to add more arguments to our function, we can easily add more Case branches. We conclude our subroutine by printing out the values of our local variables.

To call this subroutine we need to create an array of the size based on the number of arguments we wish to pass into the function, and then populate this array with the values we wish to pass to the function. Finally, we pass along the created array as the single argument to the function:

'Create the array to pass in to our sub Dim myArray 'Call the subroutine with two arguments Redim myArray(1) myArray(0) = Value1 myArray(1) = Value2 mySubroutine myArray

Notice that you can also use the Array constructor syntax like so:

'Call the subroutine with three arguments mySubroutine Array(Value1, Value2, Value3)

Now that we have a way to pass only the arguments we choose using the array-based method, let's take a look at another approach at optional arguments: the NULL-checking approach, which we'll examine in Part 2.