Schiz,

To use a non-shared public method of a class you need to create an object
from the class and call the object's method.

Kerry Moorman

"Schizoid Man" <schiz@lon.don> schrieb:

Place the caret on 'Shared' and press F1 :-).

Shared members belong to all instances of the class and can even be used
when no instance of the class exists.  To do the latter, you can simply use
the '<type name>.<shared member>' syntax.  Instance members, on the other
hand, always belong to one instance of the type.  Thus you have to
instantiate the type in order to be able to access them:

\\\
Dim c As New Car()
c.Color = Color.Red
...
///

'Color' is a non-shared public property of the class 'Car'.

You don't.  Making it Public does that.

Let's think about a couple methods found in the String class.
First, the instance (i.e. non-Shared) method, Split():

   Dim s as String = "a|b|c"

   ? s.Split( "|" ).Length
   3

In this case, it's really /quite/ important that you know /which/ string
object [instance] you're playing with.  Using Split on another string
gets you totally different results.
So, instance methods [generally] rely on instance /data/.

Now consider the Shared method, String.Join():

   Dim sArray as New String() { "a", "b", "c" }

   ? String.Join( "|", sArray )
   "a|b|c"

Now, in this case, you don't actually /care/ which String object you use
to /invoke/ this method; you're effectively calling a method that "just
happens to be" included in the String class (because it's a logical
place to put it).  That method will work perfectly happily with /any/
String value that you /pass/ to it - and that's another important
difference.  Shared methods can't use "Me" because they don't relate to
any given instance of the object.

Actually, from VB'2005 onwards, trying to use a Shared method /through/
an object instance gets a warning out of the compiler:

"123".Join( "|", sArray ) ' work up to VB'2003
String.Join( "|", sArray ) ' is the "correct" syntax.

HTH,
   Phill  W.