What are the benefits and risks of using the StrPtr function in VBA?

Question

While looking for a way to test when a user cancels an InputBox, I stumbled across the StrPtr function. I believe it checks if a variable was ever

Answer 1

In my opinion: Using StrPtr in order to identify if a value converts to 0 is extra code to write. if you use the following function like your example above

Sub woohoo()
    Dim myVar As String
    myVar = "hello"
    myVar = InputBox("Enter something.")
   'if Cancel is hit myVar will = "" instead of hello.
    'MsgBox StrPtr(myVar) not needed
    MsgBox myVar 'will show ""
End Sub

Now is this the only reason to not use StrPtr no not at all. The other issue you run into with using unsupported functions is that eventually they can break the application. Whether its a library issue or another programmer looking through your code and trying to find that function it just is not a good idea. This may not seem like a big deal if your script is only 100 lines long. But what about when it is thousands of lines long. If you have to look at this code 2 years down the road because something broke it would not be very fun to have to find this magical function that just does not work anymore and try to figure out what it did. Lastly especially in VBA you can get overflow errors. If StrPtr is used and it goes past the allocated space of your data type that you declared it's another unnecessary error.

Just my 2 cents but due to being able to use less code and the function being more stable without it I would not use it.

10+ years Excel Programmer.