Declare a 0-Length String Array in VBA - Impossible?

Question

Is it really not possible to declare a 0-length array in VBA? If I try this:

Dim lStringArr(-1) As String

I get a compile error saying rang

Answer 1

As noted in the comments, you can do this "natively" by calling Split on a vbNullString, as documented here:

expression - Required. String expression containing substrings and delimiters. If expression is a zero-length string(""), Split returns an empty array, that is, an array with no elements and no data.

If you need a more general solution (i.e., other data types, you can call the SafeArrayRedim function in oleaut32.dll directly and request that it re-dimensions the passed array to 0 elements. You do have to jump through a couple of hoops to get the base address of the array (this is due to a quirk of the VarPtr function).

In the module declarations section:

'Headers
Private Type SafeBound
    cElements As Long
    lLbound As Long
End Type

Private Const VT_BY_REF = &H4000&
Private Const PVDATA_OFFSET = 8

Private Declare PtrSafe Sub CopyMemory Lib "kernel32" Alias _
    "RtlMoveMemory" (ByRef Destination As Any, ByRef Source As Any, _
    ByVal length As Long)

Private Declare Sub SafeArrayRedim Lib "oleaut32" (ByVal psa As LongPtr, _
    ByRef rgsabound As SafeBound)

---

The procedure - pass it an initialized array (any type) and it will remove all elements from it:

Private Sub EmptyArray(ByRef vbArray As Variant)
    Dim vtype As Integer
    CopyMemory vtype, vbArray, LenB(vtype)
    Dim lp As LongPtr
    CopyMemory lp, ByVal VarPtr(vbArray) + PVDATA_OFFSET, LenB(lp)
    If Not (vtype And VT_BY_REF) Then
        CopyMemory lp, ByVal lp, LenB(lp)
        Dim bound As SafeBound
        SafeArrayRedim lp, bound
    End If
End Sub

---

Sample usage:

Private Sub Testing()
    Dim test() As Long
    ReDim test(0)
    EmptyArray test
    Debug.Print LBound(test)    '0
    Debug.Print UBound(test)    '-1
End Sub

Answer 2

Per Comintern's comment.

Make a dedicated utility function that returns the result of the VBA.Strings.Split function, working off vbNullString, which is effectively a null string pointer, which makes the intent more explicit than using an empty string literal "", which would also work:

Public Function EmptyStringArray() As String()
     EmptyStringArray = VBA.Strings.Split(vbNullString)
End Function

Now branch your function to check for the existence of keys, and return EmptyStringArray if there are none, otherwise proceed to resize your result array and convert each source element.

Answer 3

If we're going to use WinAPI anyway, we can also cleanly create the array from scratch using the WinAPI SafeArrayCreate function instead of redimensioning it.

Struct declarations:

Public Type SAFEARRAYBOUND
    cElements As Long
    lLbound As Long
End Type
Public Type tagVariant
    vt As Integer
    wReserved1 As Integer
    wReserved2 As Integer
    wReserved3 As Integer
    pSomething As LongPtr
End Type

WinAPI declarations:

Public Declare PtrSafe Function SafeArrayCreate Lib "OleAut32.dll" (ByVal vt As Integer, ByVal cDims As Long, ByRef rgsabound As SAFEARRAYBOUND) As LongPtr
Public Declare PtrSafe Sub VariantCopy Lib "OleAut32.dll" (pvargDest As Any, pvargSrc As Any)
Public Declare PtrSafe Sub SafeArrayDestroy Lib "OleAut32.dll"(ByVal psa As LongPtr)

Use it:

Public Sub Test()
    Dim bounds As SAFEARRAYBOUND 'Defaults to lower bound 0, 0 items
    Dim NewArrayPointer As LongPtr 'Pointer to hold unmanaged string array
    NewArrayPointer = SafeArrayCreate(vbString, 1, bounds)
    Dim tagVar As tagVariant 'Unmanaged variant we can manually manipulate
    tagVar.vt = vbArray + vbString 'Holds a string array
    tagVar.pSomething = NewArrayPointer 'Make variant point to the new string array
    Dim v As Variant 'Actual variant
    VariantCopy v, ByVal tagVar 'Copy unmanaged variant to managed one
    Dim s() As String 'Managed string array
    s = v 'Copy the array from the variant
    SafeArrayDestroy NewArrayPointer 'Destroy the unmanaged SafeArray, leaving the managed one
    Debug.Print LBound(s); UBound(s) 'Prove the dimensions are 0 and -1    
End Sub