VB Forum / General / July 2004

What's the recommended way to get from a text string to an array
index?

I have a series of data records that I will be reading one at a time.
They have a format like:

 name class amount

I want to add up all of the amounts and subtotal them by name and
class:

 name    class    amount
 Joe       101      250
 Joe       107a    347
 Joe       121      123
 Sue      107b     223
 Sue      246       119

I don't know in advance which or how many names or classes I will
have, but less than 100.

I would like to define a 2-dimensional array

  SubTotals(100,100)

where SubTotals(2,5) would be the subtotal for user #2 in class #5.

I would also have a Name(100) array and a Class(100) array.

When I get a new record, I need to determine if the name and class
have been seen before or not. If not, add them to the Name() and/or
Class() arrays. If they have, determine the index numbers so I can use
that to index into SubTotals(100,100).

I know I can search Name() and Class() each time and use the index to
index into SubTotals(), but is there an easier way?

Thanks