Should I use Call keyword in VB/VBA?

Question

I use the Call keyword when calling subs in VB/VBA. I know it's optional, but is it better to use it or leave it off? I've always thought it was more explicit, but maybe it's just noise.

Also, I read this on another forum: Using the Call keyword is faster because it knows that it is not going to return any values, so it doesn't need to set up any stackspace to make room for the return value.

Answer 1

Ah ha. I have long wondered about this and even reading a two inch thick book on VBA basically says don't use it unless you want to use the Find feature of the VBE to easily find calls in large projects.

But I just found another use.

We know that it's possible to concatenate lines of code with the colon character, for example:

Function Test(mode as Boolean)      if mode = True then x = x + 1 : Exit Sub     y = y - 1 End Sub 

But if you do this with procedure calls at the beginning of a line, the VBE assumes that you're referring to a label and removes any indents, aligning the line to the left margin (even though the procedure is called as intended):

Function Test() Function1 : Function2 End Function 

Using the Call statement allows concatenation of procedure calls while maintaining your code indents:

Function Test()     Call Function1 : Call Function2 End Function 

If you don't use the Call statement in the above example, the VBE will assume that "Function1" is an label and left align it in the code window, even though it won't cause an error.

Answer 2

For VB6, if there is any chance it will be converted to VB.NET, using Call means the syntax doesn't change. (Parentheses are required in VB.NET for method calls.) (I don't personally think this is worth the bother -- any .NET converter will at least be able to put in parentheses when required. I'm just listing it as a reason.)

Otherwise it is just syntactic sugar.

Note the Call keyword is likely not to be faster when calling some other method/function because a function returns its value anyway, and VB didn't need to create a local variable to receive it, even when Call is not used.