[oldnewbie]

I searched through the previous questions and didn't see this listed anywhere. What I need is a way to concatenate and accumulate what is in several text fields into a main textbox. They need to be separated by a comma as well. The problem I'm having is that if something isn't entered into a particular text field obviously that should not appear in the main textbox. But with the code I have, if I enter, for example, data into field 1 and field 3 and click the button to concatenate the data into one field, only the data from field 3 appears. Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong?

Thanks

Private Function PutTogether(ByVal Field1 As String, ByVal Field2 As String, ByVal Field3 As String) As String

        Dim strPutTogether As String
        Dim strField1 As String = txtField1.Text
        Dim strField2 As String = txtField2.Text
        Dim strField3 As String = txtField3.Text


        If txtField1.Text = "" Then
            strPutTogether = ""
        Else : strPutTogether = txtField1.Text
        End If

        If txtField2.Text = "" Then
            strPutTogether = ""
        Else : strPutTogether += txtField2.Text
        End If

        If txtField3.Text = "" Then
            strPutTogether = ""
        Else : strPutTogether += txtField3.Text
        End If
        
        Return strPutTogether

    End Function

[DimitriV]

If t1.Text = "" or t2.Text = "" or t3.Text = "" Then
'something doesn't have text in it
Else
Maintext.Text = t1.Text & "," & t2.Text & "," & t3.Text
End If

The way I understand your question, this is a better way to achieve your goal. It's rather self-explanatory.

[oldnewbie]

When I try it that way nothing happens if I happen to have data in only field1 and field3. It works if there is data in all of them but not if data is in some of them. Any other ideas?

[DimitriV]

If t1.Text = "" then
Else
Output += t1.Text
End If

Repeat this check.

[Tryparse]

To be precise, what you're doing wrong is wiping out your accumulated string (strPutTogether) any time an empty textbox is encountered. So the text that was stored from txtField1 is getting erased when it enters the txtField2 if condition. jimmyBo's got a good suggestion, or another way to go about it would be to replace your current if conditions with something along the lines of

If txtField1.Text <> "" Then strPutTogether &= txtField1.Text & ","

[oldnewbie]

Thank you...that worked. I did have the += in there to try to accumulate it. Not sure why that didn't work. Just started working with strings, as we've always done numbers. Thanks again.

[AdamSpeight2008]

Sound like a job, that's perfect for Aggregate

Dim TextEntries = {"A", "B", "", "D", "", "F"}
Dim a = TextEntries.Aggregate(Function(p, c) If(c = "", p, p & "," & c))

[DimitriV]

But an issue could be that at the end of your text you may have a leftover comma. After all the ifs, check the last character of the text to see if it is a comma and if so, remove it.

[AdamSpeight2008]

Nope does produce an extra comma