Option Strict

Option Strict

Option Strict OFF

Option Strict OFF reduces Visual Basic .NET validation by turning off extra error messaging as you create scripts. This enables you to take some shortcuts that reduce the development time. If Strict is OFF, then some syntax errors can cause problems. Those problems are not caught through the validation.

Specify Option Strict OFF as the first line to disable the extra validation. Otherwise, Option Strict ON is assumed.

Option Strict ON

If Option Strict line is not in the script, the default value is ON; or you can add Option Strict ON to the first line to turn on the Strict option.

You must be specific about data types. You are notified when a conversion of data types can result in some loss of data; or when a specific operand cannot be used with a data type.

With Option Strict ON, the configuration of the script must be more specific than if Option Strict is OFF. This is true, especially for functions like objProperty where the returns can vary.

When the option is ON, implicit data type conversions are restricted to only widening conversions. This explicitly disallows any data type conversions in which data loss can occur and any conversion between numeric types and strings.

Specifically, you can assign an integer value to a long variable because a long variable can hold more data than an integer. You can assign a double value to a string because anything can be converted to a string. You cannot assign a string to a double without explicitly converting it to a double (that is, Double d = CDbl(stringValue)).