Assigning Controls to an Array with arbitrary Index

Hi All

I have got the idea that the Control Arrays no longer exist in VB.Net. I can use an Array of Controls to simulate it though. My application in VB has a lot of textboxes on the Forms.

Further, these Forms are divided into some pre-defined section. Loosely based on the Sections, I gave an index to the Textbox...e.g. the numbering of textboxes in Section 1 would start as 1001, 1002...and so on. Similarly in Section 2, the textboxes would be numbered like 2001, 2002 etc.

I was using this Indexing for various purposes like applying validation to all similar kinds of Textboxes. Is there any way I can assign the controls to the array on similar indices and use it the way I was doing earlier.

Using the Name or the tag property to contain the Index would not be a good idea. I have around 700 to 800 controls and iterating through the entire collection of controls to arrive upon the required textbox might be expensive.

Thanx
Isha

control array is not there in vb .net but u can create an array of txtboxes orwhatever at runtime and then u can loop through those....

But I want to assign specific indices to these Controls in the Array.