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My end users were very impressed with this little functionality because it saved them the headache of finding the exported Excel spreadsheet themselves. KEEPING REGULAR WITH REGULAR EXPRESSIONS 12 Keeping Regular with Regular Expressions The regular expressions code can be found in the folder prjRegularExpressions. Any developer writing text parsing software has probably found regular expressions to be an important tool in their toolbox. Regular expressions can be useful in programs such as log file parsers, HTML readers/extractors, and string search engines.

For example, suppose you were populating a Treeview with the names of employees from a corporate database for the purposes of creating an org chart. While loading each employee into a TreeNode object on the Treeview, you could store the primary key for each employee (be it the social security number, a GUID, or some other unique identifying element) into the Tag property on the TreeNode. Then, when the application user selected a TreeNode in the Treeview, you would have instant access to the primary key of the table from which you loaded these employees.

From my very first days of Visual Basic, I was enamored with using control arrays. My first “real” Visual Basic program was a card game, and it seemed 25 26 F R O M V B 6 TO V B . N E T a perfect solution to create an array of picture box controls with the appropriate bitmaps for playing cards. I completed my card game, uploaded it to a local BBS (this was a few years before the Internet), and received a few comments about it. My use of control arrays didn’t stop with that first card game. I must have written a half dozen card games, as well as some crossword-type games, the mandatory number scramble game, and a few other simple games that gave me fun projects to work on while I learned Visual Basic.