What does the keyword Set actually do in VBA?

Question

Hopefully an easy question, but I'd quite like a technical answer to this!

What's the difference between:

i = 4

and

set i = 4

in VBA? I know that the latter will throw an error, but I don't fully understand why.

Many thanks!

Answer 1

Set is used for setting object references, as opposed to assigning a value.

Answer 2

In your case, it will produce an error. :-)

Set assigns an object reference. For all other assignments the (implicit, optional, and little-used) Let statement is correct:

Set object = New SomeObject
Set object = FunctionReturningAnObjectRef(SomeArgument)

Let i = 0
Let i = FunctionReturningAValue(SomeArgument)

' or, more commonly '

i = 0
i = FunctionReturningAValue(SomeArgument)

Answer 3

From MSDN:

Set Keyword: In VBA, the Set keyword is necessary to distinguish between assignment of an object and assignment of the default property of the object. Since default properties are not supported in Visual Basic .NET, the Set keyword is not needed and is no longer supported.

Answer 4

Off the top of my head, Set is used to assign COM objects to variables. By doing a Set I suspect that under the hood it's doing an AddRef() call on the object to manage it's lifetime.

Answer 5

set is used to assign a reference to an object. The C equivalent would be

 int i;
int* ref_i;

i = 4; // Assigning a value (in VBA: i = 4)
ref_i = &i; //assigning a reference (in VBA: set ref_i = i

Answer 6

set is used to set references for already defined objects