Beginning Visual Basic: Part 4

In Visual Basic, you can use all of the normal mathematical symbols to perform mathematical functions. For example:

• + - Used for addition, like 1+1=2.
• - - Used for subtraction, like 5-3=2.
• * - Used for multiplication, like 3*2=6
• / - Used for division, like 5/2=2.5
• MOD - This one is a bit stranger. This gets the remainder after an integer division. For example, 7 MOD 3 = 1, or 19 MOD 5 = 4.

NOTE: When using the ampersand (&) to concatenate two variables, VB will automatically attempt to convert both variables to strings.

When doing mathematical equations, VB has a few shortcuts. For example, rather than writing:

We can simply write:

Other math operations include:

• Math.Sqrt(number) - Returns the square root of the number within the parentheses.
• Math.Round(number to round, number of decimal places) - Rounds the number to the specified number of decimal places.
• Math.Abs(number) - Returns the absolute value of the number within the parentheses.
• Math.Pi - Returns the number Pi.

There are also ways to convert strings to integers, or integers to strings. We will discuss conversions on the next page.

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