Working with buffers

I am trying to store a file's data into a byte array and display it in a textbox.

I tried this:

VB Code:

Option Explicit
Private b() As Byte
Private Sub Command1_Click()
Open "c:\7za.exe" For Binary As #1
Get #1, , b
Text1.Text = b
Close #1
End Sub

when i click the button text1 becomes empty. Note that c:\7za.exe is a valid file.

Texboxes can't display the full range of ascii characters (most notably chr(0) ), which is what binary files can contain.

You can either remove the "invalid" characters from b before displaying it, or display it in way that can show all the characters.

Ok, then how would I get the length af an array.
I tried Len(b) but it didn't work. Mind you I am still learning the methods of vb6 as they differ from .net

UBound(b) would return the last index of an array. Since arrays often start from index 0 (and it is a good thing if they always do: other types of starting indexes are slow in VB6) you need to add one to get the total number of items.

To check if an array is empty, see ArrayInit function I've provided in this post at the FAQ forum.