Hey all, I'm new to WPF/Silverlight, which I've noticed is of the sweet goodness. In a project, I'd like to add a listbox/grid type control that's similar to the Contacts app on the iPhone, as seen in this screenshot[]. ie: it has an A-Z type thing on the side , which when clicked, takes you to the group of items starting w/ that letter. The goal is to display a potentially "large" # of items in it but still make it easy to find the one you're looking for. Maybe at the top, it'd have a textbox for autocompletion while typing, and/or a search button, similar to what you get in Blend for searching properties in the Property editor window. Does anyone know what I mean? I'd be interested in any free or paid 3rd party control which has this or parts of this,so if you know of any, let me know. If I should roll my own, could you describe the basic layout items? Would it just be a datagrid/dataview type control using a grouping feature, & scrollviewer & a few snippets to move it to items based on clicks, etc? Any help is appreciated!

I guess somebody forgot to ask question "how many thousands of lines of code in one function is too many?"

Complements of a ball of VB6 mud:

6580 Exit Function

where 6580 is an automatically generated line number, starting from 1.

lol! that's ridiculous!

not a bad idea!

lol! I think they were using that as the coding standards document!

nah, it's bad. who names their variables like this in a for loop? were it written "for i = 0 to iCount", I'd be giving this guy a high 5 already.

In all of computer programdom, I've never encounterd this arrangement of i & iCount in a for loop:

i = getcountofsomething()
For iCount = 0 To i
  If something(iCount)) Then
    bOk = True
    Exit For
  End If
Next iCount

modified on Thursday, February 11, 2010 6:33 PM

mlNumOfSomething = SomeClass.GetSomething(anIDArray())

For lli = 1 To mlNumOfSomething

SomeClass.GetSomeInfo anIDArray(lli), Description:=aDescription
ReDim Preserve msAllAgencies(1 To mlNumOfSomething)
msSomeArray(lli) = aDescription

Next lli

in this case, the incoming parameter defaults to "ByRef", lRetVal defaults to Variant, and the return value is only set when the line of code "ThisFunctionName = aValue", so luckily it sets the lsDate param, but the return value is never set 'cause the author was retarded

That's a mighty nice turd you found there

Private Function SomeCrappyCode(lsDate As String) As Long
  On Error GoTo ErrorHandler

  Dim llRetval
  Dim llPosition As Long
  
  'Updates the US Month Name in SQL Date to Locale
  'Month Name in Locale Language
  
  llPosition = InStr(lsDate, "Jan")
  If llPosition > 0 Then
    lsDate = Left(lsDate, llPosition - 1) & Format(DateSerial(98, 1, 1), "MMM") & right(lsDate, Len(lsDate) - 3)
    llRetval = True
    Exit Function
  End If
  
  'Copy & paste the above code block 11 more times for Feb...December  

  mlUpdateMonthStringLocale = llRetval
    
Exit Function
ErrorHandler:

  WriteErrorLogEntry Err.number, "SomeCrappyCode", Err.description
  Exit Function
  Resume

End Function

and they say it's hard to improve upon perfection...

If Something() Then
lblpnl10(1).Caption = GetCaptionText(10977, lblpnl10(1).Caption)
lblpnl10(0).Caption = GetCaptionText(10978, lblpnl10(0).Caption)
frapnl10(0).Caption = GetCaptionText(10979, frapnl10(0).Caption)
chkKeepOrigRadioName.Caption = GetCaptionText(10980, chkKeepOrigRadioName.Caption)
lblpnl03(14).Caption = GetCaptionText(10981, lblpnl03(14).Caption)
lblpnl03(13).Caption = GetCaptionText(10982, lblpnl03(13).Caption)
Frame12.Caption = GetCaptionText(10983, Frame12.Caption)
Label13.Caption = GetCaptionText(10984, Label13.Caption)
Label5.Caption = GetCaptionText(10985, Label5.Caption)
Label14.Caption = GetCaptionText(10986, Label14.Caption)
Frame9.Caption = GetCaptionText(10987, Frame9.Caption)
chkLogLateShiftEnd.Caption = GetCaptionText(10988, chkLogLateShiftEnd.Caption)
....48 more
End If

Quick Q for the interop specialists among us: I have a COM object written in a VB6 legacy app. The public method I'm trying to call is something like this in VB6:

Public Function MyFunc(ByRef theDictionary As Dictionary) as Long
' ... do stuff
End Function

The VB6 project has a Reference to "Microsoft Scripting Runtime". In C#, I've imported this vb6 type w/ the type library importer, and have a reference to "Microsoft Scripting Runtime", ie: Interop.Scripting.dll in my C# project. When I call this class from C#, like so:

public int CallMyFunc()
{
Vb6Type vbObj = new Vb6TypeClass();

Scripting.Dictionary vbDictionary = new Scripting.DictionaryClass();
...
int retVal = vbObj.MyFunc(ref vbDictionary);
....

}

I end up w/ a compiler error that doesn't make sense to me: Error 3 Argument '1': cannot convert from 'ref Scripting.Dictionary [c:\...\Interop.Scripting.dll]' to 'ref Scripting.Dictionary []' Note that it can't convert the variable vbDictionary to an array of Scripting.Dictionary. Intellisense will show the parameter type as "ref Scripting.Dictionary theDictionary", hitting F12 takes me to a function of the imported type that looks like this:

[DispId(1234)]
int MyFunc(ref Dictionary theDictionary);

Any suggestions? I have the source for the VB6 and I'm actaully calling a wrapper which has the same signature. I'm about to create a custom type in vb to wrap this and avoid the drama.

that's extending a quite a bit of credit, lol!

not that I know of.. it just doesn't care if the goto label there apparently.

yes, it was. isn't it beautiful?

Yeah, I think this was a plug in which added this mess to all new functions/subs. They've since stopped using it, but it's still as one fugly mug when you see it, especially in something like this. Were I given a free reign, I'd be all over the my delete button right now.

Yes, only this one was even a bigger horror especially since it only has one line of code that does anything & it's not even something that could raise an error. It's positively lovely.