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Visual Basic for Applications Language Specification [pdf]

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Re: Visual Basic for Applications Language Specification [pdf]

#4

Post by badsectoracula »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #2

Is the language spec for Visual Basic 6 available anywhere?

I don't think VB6 (or really any prior VB) had a real spec, the language was basically QBASIC stitched on a form editor for VB1 and extended over time to add more stuff and after some point could also be embedded in other programs (hence "Visual Basic for Applications").

AFAIK this spec isn't even for VB6, but for a "VB7" (i.e. VB6 with a bunch of changes) that never really got a standalone version and Microsoft made a spec for after the fact once they decided to attempt to make the file formats used in Office an open standard.

It is useful if you want to make a VB6 compatible parser but AFAIK those who attempted that had to "peek and poke" the real VB6 for various edge corners anyway.

Re: Visual Basic for Applications Language Specification [pdf]

#6

Post by pjmlp »

badsectoracula wrote: post #4
KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #2

Is the language spec for Visual Basic 6 available anywhere?

I don't think VB6 (or really any prior VB) had a real spec, the language was basically QBASIC stitched on a form editor for VB1 and extended over time to add more stuff and after some point could also be embedded in other programs (hence "Visual Basic for Applications"). AFAIK this spec isn't even for VB6, but for a "VB7" (i.e. VB6 with a bunch of changes) that never really got a standalone version and Microsoft made…

QuickBasic, not QBasic.

They weren't the same, those that only experienced MS-DOS 5.0 QBasic keep mixing them up.

QBasic was a stripped down version of QuickBasic.

Not sure about you, talking in general.

Re: Visual Basic for Applications Language Specification [pdf]

#7

Post by zxspectrum1982 »

Is there any open source implementation of VBA one can add to some application with limited effort? I'm thinking about adding macro-like functionality to one of my business applications and VBA would be the best, considering my users and Excel users intersect pretty well.

Re: Visual Basic for Applications Language Specification [pdf]

#8

Post by amichal »

zxspectrum1982 wrote: post #7

Is there any open source implementation of VBA one can add to some application with limited effort? I'm thinking about adding macro-like functionality to one of my business applications and VBA would be the best, considering my users and Excel users intersect pretty well.

I dont know about open source. But back back around 2000 it was fairly common to implement a "VBA host". It was also easy, a few dev days to scaffold and minutes to hours of dev time to expose functions. We did it with a suite of related applications (used internally by a early ebook punlisher) that interacted a lot with Office. Introspection, auto-complete and integrated help documentation all worked and technically minded editor staff could automate lots of thier work with Visual Studio provided IDE and debuggers etc

Re: Visual Basic for Applications Language Specification [pdf]

#9

Post by badsectoracula »

pjmlp wrote: post #6
badsectoracula wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think VB6 (or really any prior VB) had a real spec, the language was basically QBASIC stitched on a form editor for VB1 and extended over time to add more stuff and after some point could also be embedded in other programs (hence "Visual Basic for Applications"). AFAIK this spec isn't even for VB6, but for a "VB7" (i.e. VB6 with a bunch of changes) that never really got a standalone version and Microsoft made…

QuickBasic, not QBasic. They weren't the same, those that only experienced MS-DOS 5.0 QBasic keep mixing them up. QBasic was a stripped down version of QuickBasic. Not sure about you, talking in general.

Strictly speaking i don't think it was QuickBasic either (VB1 for DOS most likely was but IIRC there were minor language differences between the two), but in my message i didn't mean the exact product, just that it used an existing BASIC implementation they had with their take on making BASIC more Pascal-like. QBASIC is by far the most known implementation of that dialect.

(i just made a search and found an article about VB1's history and VB1 was indeed based on an existing BASIC engine they called "Embedded Basic")

Re: Visual Basic for Applications Language Specification [pdf]

#10

Post by tonyedgecombe »

badsectoracula wrote: post #4
KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #2

Is the language spec for Visual Basic 6 available anywhere?

I don't think VB6 (or really any prior VB) had a real spec, the language was basically QBASIC stitched on a form editor for VB1 and extended over time to add more stuff and after some point could also be embedded in other programs (hence "Visual Basic for Applications"). AFAIK this spec isn't even for VB6, but for a "VB7" (i.e. VB6 with a bunch of changes) that never really got a standalone version and Microsoft made…

I don't think so, or at least by VB5/6 they had moved on a long way. For instance VB6 compiled to native code rather than running as an interpreter. It could even create COM objects if you felt brave enough.
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