There has to be a better way

[RichardAtherton]

In VB6, if I wanted to check that data had been entered into a field I would say something like If Textbox1.text = "", then I knew there was nothing entered.

In VB .Net, I ended up writing this:

If Instr(Ltrim(Textbox1.text), " ") = 0 then there was nothng there, but even that solution is half baked as if the box is filled completely, then it won't work, anyone got any better ideas???

The other alternative was to compare it exactly to the number of spaces between quotes but that seems very messy

[egiggey]

hi Richard I just tried the following and it worked perfectly

If TextBox1.Text = "" Then MsgBox("textbox is empty")

[RichardAtherton]

my fault for not explaining the problem fully, if you set the text to spaces as in the load event say textbox1.text = " "
then if textbox1.text = "" doesn't work.

In the end I declared a string

dim blanks as string = " "

much longer than my biggest text box and then used

if instr(blanks, textbox1.text) <> 0 then

- error message

end if

I was trying to make sure that on input for a mandatory text field the use couldn't enter spaces and defeat my edit check, I still think it looks very clumsy but I can't think of a better way

[Lethal]

This is a little more pleasing to look at..

    Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Dim sBuffer As String = "  "

        If sBuffer.Trim(sBuffer) = String.Empty Then
            MessageBox.Show("I'm Empty!!")
        End If
    End Sub

[RichardAtherton]

totally agree thanks!!!