VB or not VB, that is my question

Hi,

I am working in science and I have a lot of number crunching to do. I can fool around a bit with Qbasic, but this is not flexible enough anymore. I was looking in excel and found this the Visual Basic thing. This is the problem:

1. There is a machine, who creates a file with 200+ data points (x,y).
2. The file has to be imported in Excel
3. The x-values are not following each other in a sequential way (x=1,5,9,45,46,67,90,112…., in stead of 1,2,3,4,5,6….) .
4. I like to get my x-values in sequential order, and if there was no x-value, the corresponding y-value should be zero.
5. The program should check if my y-values are true data points.
6. The remaining datapoints are processed in a excel spreadsheet.

Is Visual Basic the right tool to solve my problem?



Cheers,

Martijn

While I don't really like visual basic (screwy syntax etc), it will probably work fine for what you want to do. You might not even have to write much code yourself. Try recording a macro in Excel to automate most of the functions, then just add what you need. VB is easy to use w/ other Microsoft components like that.

If your number crunching, there is Fortran and...fortran

Would that work to import to excel and such very easily? (I'm just curious, b/c I don't know anything about Fortran, other than its used for math and some older engineering apps around school)

If it is a one time deal or if you just want to wipe something out in the smallest amount of time possible, VB will do the job. It works well with Excel. It is what you call "Home Field Advantage".

Otherwise, if it is number crunching and processing intensive, I suggest C++.