Integer Vs Long Confusion

Question

I have seen many believe in the following

VBA converts all integer values to type Long

In fact, even the MSDN article says

“In recent versions, however, VBA converts all integer values to type Long, even if they're declared as type Integer.”

How is this possible? Consider this simple example.

Sub Sample()     Dim I As Integer     I = 123456789 End Sub 

If VBA converts all Integer values to type Long even if they're declared as type Integer, then the above should never give you the Overflow error!

What am I missing here? Or should I take it that the statement is incorrect and pay serious heed to that the link says in the beginning

Answer 1

An integer declared as an Integer is still type checked as an Integer. The msdn documentation is referencing how the variable is stored internally. On a 32 bit system, an Integer will be stored in 32 BITS not Bytes, while on a 16 bit system the value is stored in a 16 BIT space or register, it would have been stored in 16. Hence the maximum size.

There is no type conversion going on as far as VBA is concerned. An int is an int and a long is a long, even though they now take up just as much space.