FIX: Visual Basic 6.0 Booleans are Coerced to Localized Strings

When Boolean constants or variables are concatenated into a string and the Regional Setting is not English, Visual Basic 6.0 coerces the Boolean value to a string containing the text of the value. For example, when the Regional Settings are set to French, you would see the string "Vrai" for True. Unfortunately, "Vrai" will not be converted back to the Boolean True even when CBool is applied. If CBool is applied to the string containing the localized word, a Type Mismatch error occurs.

The simplest work around is to apply CStr or Str$ to the Boolean constant or variable before it is coerced into the localized word. For example, in the following sample, the Boolean value True is explicitly converted to a string to retain the English value. The string can then be successfully parsed and converted back to a Boolean value.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

This bug was corrected in Visual Studio 6.0 Service Pack 3. For more information about Visual Studio service packs, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

194022 INFO: Visual Studio 6.0 Service Packs, What, Where, Why  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/194022/EN-US/ )

194295 HOWTO: Tell That Visual Studio 6.0 Service Packs Are Installed  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/194295/EN-US/ )

Visual Basic 6.0 coerces Boolean constants and variables to strings containing localized words when Regional Settings are set to a language other than English. Visual Basic 6.0 is unable to convert these localized strings back to their Boolean values.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Click the Start button, point to Settings and then select Control Panel.
2. In the Control Panel dialog box, double-click Regional Settings.
3. In the Regional Settings dialog box, click the Regional Settings tab (General tab on Windows 2000), set the language to French, then click OK. You need to reboot your computer if you are using the Windows 95 or Windows 98 operating system.
4. Create a Visual Basic 6.0 Standard EXE project. Form1 is created by default.
5. Paste the following code in the General Declarations section of Form1:

      Private Sub Form_Load()
      sTemp = "-" & True   ' Visual Basic 6.0 coerces True to localized string
      Debug.Print sTemp
      sTemp = Right(sTemp, 4)
      Debug.Print sTemp
      bTemp = CBool(sTemp) ' Visual Basic 6.0 Type Mismatch error occurs here.
      End Sub
   					

6. Step through the code and monitor the value of sTemp. You can do this by pressing F8 repeatedly and watch the values displayed for sTemp in the Immediate Window or you can place the mouse pointer over the variable in the integrated development environment (IDE). After the first line is executed, sTemp is coerced or translated into -Vrai. Next, the hyphen is parsed out. When the conversion to Boolean is attempted, a Type Mismatch error occurs.