Erase Statement
This page is specific to the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) Language Reference for Office 2010.
Reinitializes the elements of fixed-size arrays and releases dynamic-array storage space.
Syntax
Erase arraylist
The required arraylist argument is one or more comma-delimited array variables to be erased.
Remarks
Erase behaves differently depending on whether an array is fixed-size (ordinary) or dynamic. Erase recovers no memory 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 a zero-length string (""). |
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.
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 zero-length
' string ("").
Erase StrFixArray ' Each element set to 0.
Erase VarArray ' Each element set to Empty.
Erase DynamicArray ' Free memory used by array.