Erase Statement

Description

Reinitializes the elements of fixed-size arrays and deallocates dynamic-array storage space.

Syntax

Erase array

The array argument is the name of the array variable to be erased.

Remarks

It is important to know whether an array is fixed-size (ordinary) or dynamic because Erase behaves differently depending on the type of array. 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	Sets each element to zero-length ("").
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.

The following example illustrates the use of the Erase statement:

Dim NumArray(9)     
Dim DynamicArray()
ReDim DynamicArray(9)  ' Allocate storage space.
Erase NumArray         ' Each element is reinitialized.
Erase DynamicArray     ' Free memory used by array.