Visual Basic Family Compared to ViviFire

ViviFire has many of the same features as Visual Basic and VB.NET. This appendix tries to show what is different.

Letter case

ViviFire and VB ignore the letter case of keywords. For example, END and end are the same keyword in each language.

But, ViviFire is different from VB with declared elements. If ViviFire finds two names with different letter cases, they refer to different elements. For example, ABC and abc refer to two different declared elements.

Equivalent features

Feature	Shared	Different
Arithmetic operators	`+`, `-`, `*`, `/`, `\`, `Mod`, `^`
Assignment operators	`&=`, `+=`, `-=`, `*=`, `/=`, `\=`	Does not have `^=`. `<<=` → `SHL=`, `>>=` → `SHR=`
`Call`	Almost the same
Comparison Operators	Almost the same
`Const`	Almost the same
`Do…Loop`	Almost the same
`Exit`	Almost the same	Does not have `Exit Select`.
`For`	Almost the same	`Next` → `End For`
`If…Else`	Almost the same	`ElseIf` → `Else If`
Logical and bitwise operators	`And`, `Or`, `Xor`	`AndAlso` → `And Then`, `OrElse` → `Or Else`
`ReDim`	Almost the same	Does not have `Preserve`.
`Return`	Almost the same
`Select…Case`	Almost the same	`Is` is not optional.
`Try…Catch…Finally`	Almost the same	Does not have `Catch…When`
`While`	Almost the same	`Wend` → `End While`

Easy translations

The table that follows shows elements of VB that have a different name in ViviFire.

In VB	In ViviFire
`<<` and `>>`	`SHL` and `SHR`
`AddressOf`	`Sub` or `Function`
`Inherits`	`Is`, `Extends`, or `Inherits`
`Is` and `IsNot`	`Is`
`Me` and `MyBase`	`Self` and `Base`
`MustInherit` and `MustOverride`	`@Abstract`
`Overridable` and `Overrides`	`@Open` and `@Override`
`RaiseEvent`	`Raise Event`
`ReadOnly` and `WriteOnly`	`@ReadOnly` and `@WriteOnly`
`Shared` and `Static`	`@Shared`
`Throw`	`Raise`

Data types

In VB	In ViviFire	In VB	In ViviFire
`Boolean`	`Boolean`	`String`	`String`
`SByte`	`Int8`	`Byte`	`UInt8`
`Short`	`Int16`	`UShort`	`UInt16`
`Integer`	`Int32`	`UInteger`	`UInt32`
`Long`	`Int64`	`ULong`	`UInt64`
`Date`	`DateTime`	`Decimal`	`Fixed128`
`Single`	`Real32`	`Double`	`Real64`

ViviFire also has Int128, UInt128, Fixed64, and Real128.

Features almost the same

In VB	In ViviFire
`Delegate`	`Event`
`Handles`	`Handles` (`Sub`)
`If()`	Conditional Operator
`Implements` (`Class`)	`Does` (`Class`)
`Interface`	`Trait`
`Module`	`Program` and `Library`
`New` (operator)	`New` (statement)
`Nothing`	`#Null`
`Structure`	`Struct`
`TypeOf…Is`	`Is`

Features not available

Access levels: Private, Protected, Public, and Friend
Custom Property
GoSub and GoTo label
Labels and line numbers as targets of GoSub and GoTo
Like operator
NotInheritable and NotOverridable, because these are the defaults
Operator overloading
“Partial” classes and structures
Variant data type