When True is Not True

When programming macros, it is often necessary to determine the result of a status or to set a value. This is most often done with standard values, such as TRUE and FALSE. Over the years, these have developed into generally accepted numeric values on which programmers regularly use. For instance, if you are programming in C or C++, you know that TRUE is a value of -1 and FALSE is a value of 0.

Unfortunately, Word macros have not always been so consistent. Until VBA, there was no consistent definition of TRUE or FALSE. For instance, you can use the following in VBA and get the expected results:

Test = True
MsgBox Int(Test)

This displays the value of Test, which has been set to TRUE (-1). Now try the same thing in WordBasic:

Test = True
MsgBox Str$(Int(Test))

When you run this, the value 0 is displayed. This is because WordBasic has no pre-defined values for TRUE or FALSE. You can assign these at the beginning of your WordBasic macros so you can then use them in the main body of the macro, as in the following:

TRUE = -1
FALSE = 0

You must be careful, however, that you don't expect WordBasic to always return TRUE or FALSE from functions. Sometimes WordBasic returns 1 for TRUE and sometimes it returns -1, depending on the function being used. VBA is more consistent, with FALSE always being equal to 0 and TRUE always being equal to -1. The following can help you remember the various values for TRUE and FALSE:

One way around the discrepancy in WordBasic is to never use TRUE, but always use NOT(FALSE).