A Variant Canard?

[davegri]

It seems to be gospel that an untyped variable will be defaulted to type variant. I decided to try and verify that. Here's the result.
It seems that a variable without an explicit Type assignment when declared, will take on the Type of its later assigned value.
Interestingly, a declared variant without a value assignment will have Type 'Empty'

Public Sub DT()
    Dim s1, s2 As String: s1 = "Hello World"
    Dim b1, b2 As Boolean: b1 = "Me Too"
    Dim n1, n2 As Long: n1 = False
    Dim v1, v2 As Variant: v1 = #12/1/2020#
    
    Debug.Print "s1 Type result:"; TypeName(s1)
    Debug.Print "s2 Type result:"; TypeName(s2)
    
    Debug.Print "b1 Type result:"; TypeName(b1)
    Debug.Print "b2 Type result:"; TypeName(b2)
    
    Debug.Print "n1 Type result:"; TypeName(n1)
    Debug.Print "n2 Type result:"; TypeName(n2)
    
    Debug.Print "v1 Type result:"; TypeName(v1)
    Debug.Print "v2 Type result:"; TypeName(v2)
End Sub

Immediate:


call dt
s1 Type result:String
s2 Type result:String
b1 Type result:String
b2 Type result:Boolean
n1 Type result:Boolean
n2 Type result:Long
v1 Type resultate
v2 Type result:Empty

[Micron]

You probably have never seen this, then

http://allenbrowne.com/vba-NothingEmpty.html

In the case you mention, it is not of type Empty. The variable IS empty, or at least that's how I understand it. About as confounding as Null, I suppose.

EDIT - I just reviewed TypeName function. Documentation states that it returns information about a variable. It doesn't explicitly state that it returns the variable type.

[davegri]

Seeing Allen Brown's article and expanding his example to include the untyped var1, it does indeed appear to be a variant.
An apparent assumption here is that declaring a variable as string or variant makes little difference.

Public Sub variantDeclare()
    Dim var1, var2 As String
    If var1 = 0 Then
      Debug.Print "The uninitialized variant behaves as zero."
    End If
    If var1 = "" Then
      Debug.Print "The uninitialized variant behaves as a ZLS."
    End If
End Sub

Immediate
call variantdeclare
The uninitialized variant behaves as zero.
The uninitialized variant behaves as a ZLS.

[Micron]

I'd say it will depend entirely upon what you try to pass to it. Pretty sure you cannot pass Null to a string variable but can for variant, so I can't really agree with your conclusion.

[orange]

If you look in the Locals window when you step through the code, you'll see
var1-----variant/empty
var2-----string

Don't know if that adds to the confusion, but I accept the type from the Locals window.

Also, based on Post #1, these are the values in locals window