Is there a structure in VB where you can use myVariable("section") = myInteger?

[VaxoP]

The closest thing I can think of is a collection object, but it is very very slow, and limited to the number of items u can put in it

Is there an easier way to do this? Basically I want to have an structure that holds an array of strings, and each string has one integer associated with it

For example, im making a chat client and I want to log messages sent for a username in realtime
So if john says a message
myVar("john") = myVar("john") + 1
if mike says something
myVar("mike") = myVar("mike") + 1

similar to php i guess

how can i do this in vb? efficeintly? (i dont want to use a type because it will involve looping through all the items looking for where "john" occurs)