"John Dann" wrote:

> Is it reasonable practice to use a control to hold a variable value?
>
> There's a  (Boolean) flag that I want to allow the user to set or not
> as they wish. This will be set either simply by a checkbox on the main
> form of by a pair of radio buttons within a small groupbox. (These two
> approaches are AFAICS equivalent but I prefer the radio buttons
> because they show explicitly which of the two options has been
> chosen.)
>
> I was then going to declare a Boolean variable and set this according
> to the state of the checkbox or radio button controls, changing the
> value in the various click events etc.
>
> But maybe this use of a separate variable is totally superfluous. When
> I get to the point in the code where I need to know whether the flag
> is set or not I could just check directly the state of the checkbox or
> one of the option buttons. Is there any good reason not to go with
> this simpler approach?
>
> JGD
>

> "John Dann" <n***@prodata.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:6114m25mu93tqijbbuah8r58nvimprr9k4@4ax.com...
> > Is it reasonable practice to use a control to hold a variable value?
> >
> > There's a  (Boolean) flag that I want to allow the user to set or not
> > as they wish. This will be set either simply by a checkbox on the main
> > form of by a pair of radio buttons within a small groupbox. (These two
> > approaches are AFAICS equivalent but I prefer the radio buttons
> > because they show explicitly which of the two options has been
> > chosen.)
>
> This is reasonable. For an option that is on/off a checkbox is better but
> radio buttons are better for 2 seperate options. They should also be used if
> there's potentially more than 2 options, even if there's only 2 at the mo.
>
> > I was then going to declare a Boolean variable and set this according
> > to the state of the checkbox or radio button controls, changing the
> > value in the various click events etc.
> >
> > But maybe this use of a separate variable is totally superfluous. When
> > I get to the point in the code where I need to know whether the flag
> > is set or not I could just check directly the state of the checkbox or
> > one of the option buttons. Is there any good reason not to go with
> > this simpler approach?
>
> Generally it's bad practice to store the same data twice as it gives
> potential for each to be different. The only reason I would do this is for
> speed but even in that case I would grab the value before the start of a
> loop and discard it at the end.
>
> In regards to what dennis said about accessing it globally, a seperate
> variable might be necessary but only if the value needs to remain after the
> form is closed.
>
> Michael