PRB: Can't Have Fixed Length Strings >32K in 32-bit Windows

• Standard, Professional and Enterprise Editions of Microsoft Visual Basic, 32-bit only, for Windows, version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

Attempting to create fixed-length strings within a user-defined type in the 32-bit version of Microsoft Visual Basic version 4.0 generates this error:

   "Fixed or static data can't be larger than 64K"

CAUSE

Because 32-bit Microsoft Visual Basic uses Unicode to store strings and Unicode requires two bytes per character in a string, fixed-length strings take twice as many bytes of storage as the 16-bit versions of Visual Basic. If you assign or dimension more that 32K characters to a string, the storage actually exceeds the 64K limit of Visual Basic user-defined types.

RESOLUTION

Larger strings can be assigned to string elements of user-defined types by using variable-length strings instead of fixed-length strings.

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Start a new project in Visual Basic. Form1 is created by default.

2. Add a code module (Module1) to your project by choosing Module from the Insert menu.

3. Add the following code to the General Declarations section of Module1:

         Type MyType
            MyString As String * 33000
         End Type
   
   

4. Start the program by choosing Start from the Run menu or by pressing the F5 key. You should see the following run-time error message:

   "Fixed or static data can't be larger than 64K"