VB.Net Code grouping indentation with a colon :

Question

So in the code I work on right now my predecessor has written these weird colons before some items of a group box in VB.Net Forms. It looks like this:

myGroupBox.Text = "MyGroupBox"
myGroupBox.Bounds = New Rectangle( ... )
: firstGrpBxElement.Text = "First"
: firstGrpBxElement.Bounds = New Rectangle( ... )
: scndGrpBxElement.Text = "Second"
: scndGrpBxElement.Bounds = New Rectangle( ... )
: thirdGrpBxElement.Text = "Third"
: thirdGrpBxElement.Bounds = New Rectangle( ... )
myGroupBox.Height = thirdGrpBxElement.Bottom + Padding

... where the = New Rectangle(... ) mean proper Rectangles. The ... is just to make this easier to read (and the coordinates arent important in this case, I suppose).

What do these colons mean? Is it just for readabilities sake, or should I use them? Because in the context I understood them so far, they seem to be deleted by IntelliSense once I added them to the code manually (I added code in between).

I couldnt find anything on Google (probably because I dont know how they are called), so any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

Colons can be used in VB.NET to combine statements on the same line.

For example, this is valid:

Dim a = 1 : Dim b = 2

and is the same as

Dim a = 1
Dim b = 2

Maybe the code was previously used like

If a = 1 Then b = 2 : c = 3

This "saves" the If..End If block, so is identical to

If a = 1 Then
    b = 2
    c = 3
End If

Given that the statements you have there would mean that the first statement is empty, the colon is redundant and hence is removed by IntelliSense.

I would avoid those concatenations in any case, because they decrease the readability a lot.