General options dialog

Bring up the General options dialog in the Options menu.

Refer to VB 3-6 files by

This setting allows you to select a preference for displaying file vs. module names in VB 3-6 and VBA projects. Note: This setting doesn't affect VB.NET files, which can contain more than one module.

File name. Use the file name (Form1.frm) to refer to any files in your project.
Module name. If a file has a module name (such as Form1), use it to refer to the file. Otherwise, use the file name.

Late-bound object member references

Late binding is one of the trickier parts in source code analysis. Late binding occurs when you call a procedure or read/write a member variable via an expression whose data type is not available at compile-time.

Typically, late binding occurs with variables declared As Variant or As Object. It can also happen with the Form and Control data types. In addition to variables, late binding concerns the data type of a field, parameter, property and the function return value. When the class of an object reference cannot be determined by reading the source code, we cannot reliably detect what method is being called or which variable is being read. Thus, we must use heuristic rules to decide.

Ignore late-bound references. If Project Analyzer cannot detect the type of an object expression, it will simply ignore all references to its members. Use this option if the other option doesn't produce good results. Keep in mind that ignoring references may result in extra dead code warnings.
Accept all syntactically possible references. This is the default option. Project Analyzer carefully examines the code syntax and stores a reference to every possible method or member variable that might come into question. Sometimes this results in references that don't actually happen at run-time. You may also find some extra branches in your call trees. These branches are syntactically possible, but never executed. An example of this could be that 3 classes have a method with the same name, but the variable in question will only hold one of 2 classes in reality. Use this option when detecting dead code in a project with extensive use of late binding or variant/object variables.

The late binding option takes effect next time you analyze a project.

Example. In the code snippet below, we can't tell what class the object x is. The expression .Value() is late bound. By reading this code snippet, we can't what Value really is. It may be an array variable, function or property in any class that is visible at this point. If you selected Accept all syntactically possible references, we assume all suitable items named Value as being used here. If you selected Ignore late-bound references, we forget about this call and move on to the next statement.

Dim x As Object
...
y = x.Value()

Default directory

This option specifies which directory Open/Save dialogs open in. Select "Last used directory" to always continue in the previously used directory. Alternatively, enter a fixed directory and Project Analyzer will display Open/Save dialogs in that directory. This option is useful if you always work with a specific project directory, for example.

Window coordinates

Project Analyzer remembers window positions. Press the Reset button to clear the locations and open new windows at their default positions.

Default source codepage

This option lets you load code that contains international characters. By international characters we mean characters outside 7-bit ASCII (letters A-Z). This includes characters such as Å, Ø, Ω, ف or 荅, the full Unicode range.

Visual Basic code is stored in either ANSI or Unicode encoded files. Classic Visual Basic always uses ANSI, while VB.NET allows you to select either Unicode or ANSI.

Project Analyzer automatically detects Unicode encoded files and loads them correctly. For ANSI encoded files, Project Analyzer assumes the current Windows codepage. As an example, in Western Europe, the codepage 1252 Latin I is used, while in Greece, the Greek codepage is used.

If international characters appear incorrect, try changing the Default source codepage setting. Codepages named ANSI are used in Windows, while the MAC codepages are used on the Mac OS. Choose Default to make Project Analyzer use your Windows codepage setting. This is setting is selected by default.

If national characters still display incorrectly, go to Options menu, Font options dialog, and select the correct character set for each font. Please notice that some features in Project Analyzer do not fully support character sets other than what your Windows is currently running on.

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