Comments on: Hash and Stack in VBA

By: Alderaic

Alderaic — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:22:00 +0000

Dictionnary are definitely a good weapon when it comes to VBA,

I built an entire translation tool using dictionnary, and its actually running faster than the same program done in delphi (command line only and optimized). I was able to translate a 75 000 lines text file with each line being between 2000 and 3000 lines in less than 5 sec...
(open file send each line into an array using split, then replace each cell of the array by the corresponding entry in the dictionnary and write the line back to the new file)
and the dictionnary was about 1200 entries

By: ross

ross — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:07:00 +0000

…Excellent name for a blog, BTW.

By: Colin Banfield

Colin Banfield — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 05:07:00 +0000

Doug,

Thanks for the heads-up. I completely overlooked Chip's discussion on this topic.

By: Doug Glancy

Doug Glancy — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:29:00 +0000

Colin, FYI I've seen Dictionary discussed in the VBA ng's and in a bit on this blog, I think. Chip Pearson goes into using Collections and Dictionary objects in VBA on his site:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/CollectionsAndDictionaries.htm

By: Colin Banfield

Colin Banfield — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:41:00 +0000

fzz wrote:
Maybe there are arguments in favor of stacks as a data type, but there's no clear point I can see to a limited hash table type vs either generic VBA Collection objects or WSH Dictionary objects. Not the point of late/lazy population of such a table, just the pointlessness of reinventing the data structure.

Looking at the code in the links, it does appear to be a reinvention of the wheel, without the advantages of "modern tires" like the Collection object. Interesting that you mention the Dictionary object. I tend to use it more often than the Collection object. Come to think of it, I can't recall any discussion of the Dictionary object in VBA circles, in spite of its many advantages over the Collection object.

By: Colin Banfield

Colin Banfield — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:53:00 +0000

By: fzz

fzz — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:42:00 +0000

Maybe there are arguments in favor of stacks as a data type, but there’s no clear point I can see to a limited hash table type vs either generic VBA Collection objects or WSH Dictionary objects. Not the point of late/lazy population of such a table, just the pointlessness of reinventing the data structure.