For my disappointment, they don't say what does Dim stand for, and only say how it is used.īut before my hope was dim, I managed to find this BBC Microcomputer System Used Guide (that claims to be from 1984, and I don't want to doubt it).
I have also searched the documention for the old QBasic and managed to get some Darthmouth manual, all to find how they talk about Dim. And so, I have dug MSDN both current and the old CDs from the 1998 version. I sit in from of my computer with a desire to help preserve this little piece of our culture that seems lost, replaced by our guessing of what it was. As BASIC is part of our culture, and understanding why it came to be as it is - I hope - will help improve our vision of the world. So it could just mean whatever you want, all that matters is that it works.Īnyhow, that is not completely true. It doesn't have to be a word in English or any other natural language.
Really, Does It Matter? I mean, it is a keyword it has its meaning inside an artificial language. And so, you used Dim only to give dimension to the arrays (notice that ReDim resizes arrays). For instance, if the name of the variable ends with $ then it is a string (this is something that you could see even in method names up to VB6, for example Mid$). For regular variables no keyword was used, instead their type was inferred from their name. In fact, at the origins of Basic Dim was only used to declare arrays. I see "Declare in Memory" as a better meaning as it describes what it does in current versions of the language, but it is not the proper meaning. In my opinion, "Declare In Memory" is actually a mnemonic, created to make easier to learn how to use Dim. Of course, you may argue that if you do not declare the variables in memory where do you do it? Maybe "Declare in Module" is a good alternative considering how Dim is used. I've found references about Dim meaning "Declare In Memory", the more relevant reference is a document on Dim Statement published Oracle as part of the Siebel VB Language Reference. Dim have had different meanings attributed to it.
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