What is the difference between VBScript's + and & operator?

string vbscript string-concatenation
Jeremy Cron picture Jeremy Cron · Jul 30, 2009 · Viewed 58k times · Source

On every site that talks about VBScript, the '&' operator is listed as the string concatenation operator. However, in some code that I have recently inherited, I see the '+' operator being used and I am not seeing any errors as a result of this. Is this an accepted alternative?

Answer

Helen picture Helen · Jul 30, 2009

The & operator does string concatenation, that is, forces operands to be converted to strings (like calling CStr on them first). +, in its turn, forces addition if one of the expressions is numeric. For example:

1 & 2

gives you 12, whereas

1 + 2
"1" + 2
1 + "2"

give you 3.

So, it is recommended to use & for string concatenation since it eliminates ambiguity.

Related questions

Does VBScript have a substring() function?

Is there a substring() function in VBScript similar to Java's string.substring()?

Read More
Is there "\n" equivalent in VBscript?

I want to use the Replace function in VBScript to replacea all line breaks in a string for "\n". I come from java, so using \n inside a string means a line break. Is there an equivalent in VBScript?

Read More
How to check whether a string contains a substring in JavaScript?

Usually I would expect a String.contains() method, but there doesn't seem to be one. What is a reasonable way to check for this?

Read More