VARIANTVT function

Purpose

Determine the internal data type of the data stored in a Variant variable.

Syntax

numericvar = VARIANTVT(vrntvar)

Remarks

The VARIANTVT function returns the internal VT data type stored in the Variant. The entire range of %VT_ prefixed values are documented by the OLE (COM) specification and are available in WIN32API.INC.

The most important values in this limited context include %VT_EMPTY (=0) and %VT_BSTR (=8), since most of the others are numeric formats automatically resolved by the LET (with Variants) statement and VARIANT# function.

Result	Equate	Content Type
0	%VT_EMPTY	An Empty Variant
1	%VT_NULL	Null value
2	%VT_I2	Integer
3	%VT_I4	Long-Integer
4	%VT_R4	Single
5	%VT_R8	Double
6	%VT_CY	Currency
7	%VT_DATE	Date
8	%VT_BSTR	Dynamic String
9	%VT_DISPATCH	IDispatch
10	%VT_ERROR	Error Code
11	%VT_BOOL	Boolean
12	%VT_VARIANT	Variant
13	%VT_UNKNOWN	IUnknown
14	%VT_DECIMAL	Decimal
16	%VT_I1	Byte (signed)
17	%VT_UI1	Byte (unsigned)
18	%VT_UI2	Word
19	%VT_UI4	DWORD
20	%VT_I8	Quad (signed)
21	%VT_UI8	Quad (unsigned)
22	%VT_INT	Long-Integer
23	%VT_UINT	DWord
24	%VT_VOID	A C-style void type
25	%VT_HRESULT	COM result code
26	%VT_PTR	Pointer
27	%VT_SAFEARRAY	VB Array
28	%VT_CARRAY	A C-style array
29	%VT_USERDEFINED	User Defined Type
30	%VT_LPSTR	ANSI
31	%VT_LPWSTR	Unicode string
36	%VT_RECORD	UDT
64	%VT_FILETIME	A FILETIME value
65	%VT_BLOB	An arbitrary block of memory
66	%VT_STREAM	A stream of bytes
67	%VT_STORAGE	Name of the storage
68	%VT_STREAMED_OBJECT	A stream that contains an object
69	%VT_STORED_OBJECT	A storage object
70	%VT_BLOB_OBJECT	A block of memory that represents an object
71	%VT_CF	Clipboard format
72	%VT_CLSID	Class ID
&H1000	%VT_VECTOR	An array with a leading count
&H2000	%VT_ARRAY	Array
&H4000	%VT_BYREF	A reference value

If a Variant contains a complete array, the Variant type is determined by adding the base type to the array modifier. That is, for a string array, it would be %VT_BSTR plus %VT_ARRAY (= &H2008).

Quad arrays within Variants are not supported by most versions of Windows. The result from VARIANTVT can be used to see whether such an array was created properly.