Byte versus String*1 ??

[Guv]

I got Type Mismatch error using code similar to the following.

Dim Xbyte as Byte
Dim Xstring as String
Dim OneByte as String*1

Xbyte = Left(Xtring, 1)
Xbyte = OneByte


I thought that Strings were made up of Bytes, and that a Byte was equivalent to a string of length one. I understand that VB might require more than one byte of storage for a string of length one (due to control data for string), but was surprised at Type Mismatch error.

Apparently, I have been manipulating strings without understanding much about them.

Any explanations?

[Aaron Young]

VB uses Unicode to manipulate Strings, this means that it uses 2 bytes for each character, to assign a Single Char String to a Byte Variable do the following:

Dim sByte As String * 1
Dim bByte() As Byte

sByte = "A"
bByte = StrConv(sByte, vbFromUnicode)