VBA Rubberducking

Duga

00:00

RELOAD!

[Cardshifter/Cardshifter] 29 commits. 3 opened issues. 4 closed issues. 10 issue comments.

2

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] 2 commits. 1 opened issue.

[Zomis/Duga] 1 opened issue. 1 issue comment.

Mat's Mug

04:10

0

A: Making a tag for a Code Review community project

Disclaimer: I own the Rubberduck project's GitHub repository. Should we create a rubberduck-vba tag? No. The project's name is "Rubberduck", so the tag should be rubberduck. Okay then. Should we create a rubberduck tag? I'm biased, but I'll say yes, and @rolfl's answer says pretty much ...

Duga

05:02

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder pushed 16 commits to GrammarIsFun

RubberDuck

11:28

I need to finish Git integration so I can go answer these questions...stackoverflow.com/search?q=VBA+source+control

Stack Exchange

11:59

Can you answer this? Exploring the code of the Code Explorer http://codereview.stackexchange.com/q/90029?atw=1 #csharp

Tweeted by StackCodeReview on May 7, 2015 at 10:15 AM

@StackCodeReview community is awesome! #Rubberduck now has its own tag! Thanks you CR!

Tweeted by rubberduckvba on May 7, 2015 at 11:57 AM

RubberDuck

14:01

Boy I'm glad RD parses async now. I forgot how big this project is.

Phrancis

@StackExchange s/Thanks you/Thank you/ ;D

FreeMan

morning! Quiet night, eh? you all go have a life yesterday?

RubberDuck

Yeah. A little bit. I've been distracted by RL lately.

FreeMan

14:18

good for you!

RubberDuck

Thanks.

Holy carp! It's still parsing.

Phrancis

14:33

Anyone have a clue why this "empty" inbox is showing that an email is present?

Mat's Mug

@RubberDuck speaking of that, I know what's wrong with the Code Explorer.

FreeMan

@Phrancis because Microsoft

Mat's Mug

right here:

                Control.Invoke((MethodInvoker)delegate
                {
                    Control.SolutionTree.Nodes.Add(node);
                    Control.SolutionTree.Refresh();
                    AddProjectNodes(project, node);
                });

AddProjectNodes is running on the UI thread

RubberDuck

Well.... that would do it I suppose.

Duga

15:25

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] rossorp opened issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

> Take a Sub (or Function) such as the following, with multiple arguments split across multiple lines:
```vba
Public Sub Foo(ByVal Var1 As Integer, _
ByVal Var2 As Integer)

Debug.Print Var1
Debug.Print Var2

End Sub
```
If `Var1` is renamed to `Var3` using Refactor -> Rename, it results in the following:
```vba
Public Sub Foo(ByVal Var3 As Integer, ByVal Var2 As Integer)
ByVal Var2 As Integer)

Debug.Print Var3
Debug.Print Va

Mat's Mug

oh boy. that one's going to be hard.

Duga

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder added label refactorings to issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder added label bug to issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder added label vba-grammar to issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

RubberDuck

@ticker...... are you serious?

0

Q: Error (Run-time error 5) will not raise when "On error resume next" is active

I've provided the actual code I'm using below. The exact condition I'm trying to handle is the strCurrentRev argument as a zero-length string. (e.g. strCurrentRev="") If I comment out the error handling statements, trying to execute the ASC method on a zero-length string throws Run-Time Error 5...

Mat's Mug

Hint: no error will ever be raised when On Error Resume Next is active ;-) Avoid it unless you know what you're doing — Mat's Mug 5 secs ago

Duga

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder commented on issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

> Thanks for your feedback! Our VBA grammar has a number of limitations: numbered lines, comments, nested conditional compilation statements, ... and line continuations are a problem.

More specifically, the parser doesn't even see the line continuations. Since we're using a `TokenStreamRewriter` to actually perform the renaming, this issue may be very hard to fix without addressing the grammar issue with line continuations.

But it might not be impossible either. This is a very interesting

RubberDuck

15:36

@Duga Well.... that sucks.

Might be a good reason to re-introduce the concept of a physical line??

Idk.

Mat's Mug

that's a seriously major undertaking

oh fuck off

@Mat's Mug, your comment is incorrect. The error IS raised, however this statement tells the run-time environment to ignore the error and continue execution. Please do not confuse anyone by providing incorrect information. ;) — CBRF23 33 secs ago

of course it's raised and you can check for Err.Number. But for the common of mortals it's perhaps easier to understand that On Error Resume Next is shoving runtime errors under the carpet - and that's in no way an incorrect statement. — Mat's Mug 16 secs ago

RubberDuck

Ummmm. No. No it is not the best way to trap and handle specific errors differently. Not at all. No no no no no. — RubberDuck 9 secs ago

That code might have just inspired a blog actually.....

Mat's Mug

15:51

0

A: Error (Run-time error 5) will not raise when "On error resume next" is active

You're not using the right tool for the job. Runtime errors should be handled, not shoved under the carpet (because that's what On Error Resume Next does - execution happily continues as if nothing happened). You need to try to avoid raising that error in the first place. What's causing it? lng...

Phrancis

16:37

Oh... shit

Almost accidentally did SQL injection XD

RubberDuck

Little Bobby Tables called to say hello.

2

Mat's Mug

17:19

v1.22 just hit 200 downloads!

2

skiwi

@Phrancis ~~Oh... shit~~ OH SNAP!

FreeMan

@Mat'sMug shouldn't people be downloading 1.3? Considering all the stuff that running 1.22 can break if you're not careful?

but, yay for downloads!

RubberDuck

I think it's still marked as a pre-release.

@Mat'sMug we should chuck this into the parser and see if it breaks the grammar.

Select Case filterBy
    Case Is <> SmartScheduleFilterBy.CYCLE
        Set filterRecords.CYCLE = CreateNewFilterRecordset(CYCLE)

    Case Is <> SmartScheduleFilterBy.STORE
        Set filterRecords.STORE = CreateNewFilterRecordset(STORE)

    Case Is <> SmartScheduleFilterBy.TEAM
        Set filterRecords.TEAM = CreateNewFilterRecordset(TEAM)
End Select

Mat's Mug

@RubberDuck it is. I need to fine tune identifier resolution

...and get the code explorer async code right.

Oh and I just had a flash! ..hold on.

skiwi

@RubberDuck I was really wondering... WHY, but then I figured you need to test RD

RubberDuck

17:25

@skiwi Why? Because I need to take an action only when it isn't that type... odd situation to be sure.

skiwi

@RubberDuck Is that the easiest code there is for that?

RubberDuck

Short of going OOP, yes.

skiwi

Uh ok

RubberDuck

Or having three separate procs to do it..

skiwi

VBA, enough said :D

RubberDuck

17:27

It's an ugly situation admittedly. I don't like it much.

Duga

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder commented on issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

> I'm pretty sure there's an [extremely] easy fix for that one, but it involves rewriting the multiline signature on one line.

Would that work for you? The idea is to avoid breaking the code at all costs.

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder removed label vba-grammar from issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

Phrancis

I just got done with a side-by-side meeting with a new IT guy

Duga

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder added label easy-fix to issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

Phrancis

Got to show them around SNAP and all the other crappy systems we use. I also mentioned the injection problem to him...

Duga

[retailcoder/Rubberduck] retailcoder commented on issue #446: Renaming variables breaks functions/subs with variable declarations on multiple lines

> I'll go for the easy fix until the grammar understands continued lines.

RubberDuck

17:30

@Phrancis keep telling them. Someone will listen eventually.

2

Phrancis

That's what I keep telling myself...

Mat's Mug

Well then, short of avoiding avoidable errors, the correct way to handle them in VBA is to jump to an error-handling subroutine with On Error GoTo [label], handle the error, and if the error is recoverable to resume with a Resume Next instruction - inlining error handling with Resume Next is a dirty way of going about it - you're intertwining the procedure's logic with error-handling, which obscures the intent of the code. — Mat's Mug 12 secs ago

RubberDuck

17:58

0

A: Error (Run-time error 5) will not raise when "On error resume next" is active

I was asked to elaborate on a better way to handle the error, and this is the easiest place to do so. I think it's okay, because in a way it does answer the original question as well. However, let me say first that the right thing to do here is to avoid the error entirely, but for the sake of com...

Stack Exchange

18:37

[BEST OF] We're off for two days! But let's remember this great russian game. Who will dare? http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2014/05/16/russian-roulette/ http://t.co/JadJ0N4jWY

Tweeted by CommitStrip on May 7, 2015 at 6:24 PM

Phrancis

19:04

@StackExchange LOL that's hilarious

FreeMan

19:15

@FreeMan Call serves no purpose, it's just a deprecated syntax for making a procedure call. — Mat's Mug 16 mins ago

@Mat'sMug I've never seen Call used when invoking a method of an object...

deprecated or not

RubberDuck

20:07

sigh

Or you could just.. .CommandText = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE parentid=" & myparam & ";" — Luigi Mackenzie C. Brito Apr 8 at 10:16

Phrancis

nooooooooo

Phrancis

20:27

@Mat'sMug I think this might convince you that PostgreSQL is a really cool DB engine!

Mat's Mug

21:12

room topic changed to VBA: Discussions about anything VBA (and/or VB6) [fun] [pushing-it] [rubberduck] [rubberduck-programming] [vb6] [vba] [whiskey-tango-foxtrot]

I wanted that tag shortcut here :)

Phrancis

Nice!

Wow, this is like sorcery

select *
from json_populate_recordset(
  null::x,
  '[{"a":1,"b":2},{"a":3,"b":4}]'
);
>
 a | b
---+---
 1 | 2
 3 | 4

Mat's Mug

lol

pretty cool

Phrancis

Turns out we store game replays (and other things like user decks) in JSON, so we might be able to just shove that in a DB table and extract stats from that!

RubberDuck

22:53

That is pretty cool!

nhgrif

8

Q: Exploring the code of the Code Explorer

The Code Explorer is a dockable toolwindow that displays a TreeView that shows all opened VBA projects and their respective modules, but unlike the "native" Project Explorer, Rubberduck's explorer also drills down to individual module members, and allows quickly navigating them: While it looks...

c# winforms mvp rubberduck

All right, so let's act like I only know C# so well and don't feel like necessarily reading all that code... but I do want to try help, and I do have a pretty decent (I feel) understanding of multithreading

So let me see if I understand the issue correctly...

In the background, you're trying to "explore the code" to find what belongs in the tree, and then you intend to update the UI (which obviously must be done in the UI thread)

And you'd like the UI to get an update every time the background is done finding a particular object, correct?

Right?

Rossco

23:10

Ahhh, I'm not sure if multithreading is going to be possible. Office apps are single threaded I believe and the extension runs under the parent thread.

i.e. the Office app runs the extension for you.

nhgrif

Why... would that prevent you from spawning extra threads?

Rossco

An ex-colleague of mine used external libraries to launch additional processes with callbacks into Excel.

but that was launching external processes I believe.

nhgrif

Launching extra processes is extraordinarily different from launching multiple threads.

Rossco

yup, that's what I'm trying to say.

Not sure if launching additional threads is going to be possible, but I stand to be corrected.

nhgrif

Why wouldn't it be possible though?

That's what I don't understand.

If I make a single-threaded .exe, if can call stuff out of a .dll that does multithreaded stuff no problem.

I'm not sure what you're basing this assumption on.

I'm not saying it would definitely allow multithreaded work. I'm just saying I don't see where you make that connection.

Rossco

23:16

Can a single threaded process create more than one thread?

nhgrif

Yes. The only thing that makes it single-threaded is the fact that it's not creating multiple threads.

How else does any process become multithreaded?

They all have to start with a single thread.

Rossco

Oh really? I thought that when the process started it had to be STA or MTA

I didn't realise it could alter that.

nhgrif

Everything starts as single threaded.

Rossco

cool.

nhgrif

So... @Mat'sMug, this is Swift/stub, but this would be my approach:

@objc public protocol CodeExplorerDelegate {
     func codeExplorer(explorer: CodeExplorer, didFinishExplorering results: Array<CodeResult>)
     optional func codeExplorer(explorer: CodeExplorer, didMakeProgress results: Array<CodeResult>)
}

@objc public class CodeExplorer {
    public var workerQueue: NSOperationQueue = NSOperationQueue()
    public var callbackQueue: NSOperationQueue = NSOperationQueue.mainQueue()

    public weak var delegate: CodeExplorerDelegate?

    public func doWork() {

Where obviously the second argument in the "codeExplorer" function calls on the delegate is the actual data object representing explorered code.

Probably not an Array, but whatever it is.

I don't know if it's even remotely possible to translate that nicely to C#.

Rossco

23:36

did you read Matt's answer to himself: codereview.stackexchange.com/a/90059

Mat's Mug

@Rossco the C# code can run multithreaded without any issues.

nhgrif

Yeah, but I don't understand what all is happening there exactly.

Does my Swift stuff make sense for what I'm doing?

Mat's Mug

Hmm

nhgrif

I can explain it. Multithreading stuff is complicated. I feel like I understand it pretty well, and I feel like I'm pretty good at it in Objective-C/Swift, but it's something that is handled so differently from language to language.

Rossco

Basically what you want to do is populate the nodes in the loop with:

var node = new TreeNode(project.Name + " (parsing...)");
node.ImageKey = "Hourglass";
node.SelectedImageKey = node.ImageKey;

Mat's Mug

23:40

Kids bath time, gimme a few minutes

RubberDuck

Not to interrupt, but my phone is dying, so... I'm looking at this code here and I'm wondering why we don't create some kind of Parsed event. Inject a single instance of the parser and notify all the different clients that their "cache" is invalid. github.com/retailcoder/Rubberduck/blob/master/RetailCoder.VBE/…

Rossco

And then launch the parsing in separate threads with a callbacks to update the nodes.

Mat's Mug

I like that

Rossco

yeah I'm just trying to find the syntax to make that happen...

RubberDuck

@nhgrif your code makes perfect sense. I'm just not sure... that ^

nhgrif

23:47

Of course it makes perfect sense.

swift-is-magic.

Never forget.

RubberDuck

You wouldn't let me if I tried. =;)-

Mat's Mug

We need something that fires up some ParsingStarted and ParsingCompleted events, which the code explorer, todo explorer, code inspections, refactorings, etc. - ..everything that needs a ParseResult can tell everyone else "guys I'm refreshing the parse tree" and then that something tells everyone "ok kids, if you need to refresh anything, here's the latest parse tree"

Rossco

When you parse something, do you cache the previous parse or is it a reparse of everything?

i.e. is there any way to only parse the stuff that's changed?

Mat's Mug

Only modified modules get completely re-parsed

Rossco

ok, did you find a way to determine those that have changed?

is that the hash thing again?

Mat's Mug

23:51

If it's a comma in a 20k LoC module.... yeah

Rossco

awesome ;-)

nhgrif

@Mat'sMug So... Objective-C/Swift would do this with something called NSNotificationCenter... I doubt there is something similar to it in C#, but I can give you an example of how I might write the class myself.

RubberDuck

I also think we need to separate the concerns in the code explorer. Parsing and updating the code explorer are two related but different things.

nhgrif

So, brb with some pseudo code.

Rossco

you're using winforms controls in the explorer?

Mat's Mug

23:54

Well that something I'm talking about actually replaces the IRubberduckParser dependency

@Rossco the whole RD UI is WinForms

@nhgrif cool!

Rossco

is WPF an option?

it has way better binding.

Mat's Mug

I wish

RubberDuck

Hmm... Since ToolWindows don't get destroyed when they close, we should figure a way to catch the them closing and unregister the parsing watching event.

Mat's Mug

But the docking toolwindows make it..

Challenging

RubberDuck

That ^

Mat's Mug

23:56

@RubberDuck that's another issue I'm swallowing and pretending it's not there if you look closely at the FindAllReferences presenter, I fucked up somewhere...

RubberDuck

I've not even looked at that code to be honest.

nhgrif

@objc public protocol CodeExplorerDelegate {
    func codeExplorerDidStartExploring(explorer: CodeExplorer)
    func codeExplorer(explorer: CodeExplorer, hasUpdatedResults results: AnyObject)
    func codeExplorer(explorer: CodeExplorer, didCompleteResults results: AnyObject)
}

^ this is basically just an Interface, if that's not obvious.

and the CodeExplorer always passes itself.

Mat's Mug

@Rossco Last I checked we couldn't even add a WPF control or window to the project.. I might have missed something thought.. but also since we're a dll things are a bit different, we can't leverage styles the same way we would in a standalone app

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