Visual Basic flow charts

Help » Languages » Visual Basic

Visustin generates flow charts from Visual Basic and Visual Basic .NET source code. It also flowcharts VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), VBScript and ASP (Active Server Pages) code. The following modes are available:

Mode	Languages supported
Visual Basic, VBA	Visual Basic 1.0 to 6.0 (classic VB) and also eVB & VBCE Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) 6.0 to 7.0
VB.NET	Visual Basic .NET 2002, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 & 2015
VBScript, ASP	VBScript: server-side (ASP), client-side (HTML) or plain (*.vbs)

Other BASIC dialects: See BASIC flow charts.

Supported Visual Basic statements

The following statements are supported. Many of them are limited to VB.NET only.

If..Then..ElseIf..Else
#If..Then..#ElseIf..#Else
Select, Case
For..Next, For Each..Next
Do..Loop, While..Wend, While..End While
Goto, GoSub, Resume, Resume Next
On x Goto, On x GoSub
Try..Catch..Finally
Throw, Err.Raise
Exit For|Do|While|Select|Try|Sub|Function|Property
Continue, Continue For|Do|While
Return, Yield
End
Stop, Debug.Assert
With, Using, SyncLock
Line numbers and labels (but not both on the same line)
Rem and ' style comments
Function, Sub, Property and Operator headers
Custom Event definitions
Module, Class, Structure, Interface and Namespace definitions
Multiline lambda Sub/Function

Other statements are supported but have no specific visualization. Other compiler directives are handled as if they were comments.

Visustin can visualize either a complete VB file, class or module, one or more Subs and Functions, or a short executable code snippet.

Non-visualized syntax

Variable and constant declarations are hidden to save space. As an exception, variable declarations with an initial value are shown, as the initialization value may be important to understand the logic. In Visual Basic mode, the (declarations) section is completely hidden when procedures are detected in the file. Classic VB Attribute lines, as well as VB.NET Imports statements, are hidden as well.

The following constructs are not handled in any special way. This means you will see the code as a regular statement, not as a branch or a jump.

Procedure or function calls.
On Error Goto line. This sets an error handler but doesn't jump to it right away.
IIf, Choose and Switch do not create a branch. They are function calls, not statements.
AndAlso and OrElse expressions are not split to show the short-circuited logic. (VB.NET)

VBA notes

VBA support is not limited to any version of Office, Excel, Word or Access. Simply copy & paste your VBA code to Visustin. If you have Aivosto VBA Plug for Project Analyzer, you may use it to export code from Office documents automatically. VBA Plug is optional and only for convenience. It is not a requirement.

VBScript/ASP notes

In mode VBScript, ASP, Visustin flowcharts plain VBScript and also VBScript embedded on HTML or ASP pages. Visustin automatically detects the language mode, which is one of the following:

ASP Server-side VBScript (*.asp): Everything within <%...%> is assumed to be VBScript.; Used when: <% or %> are found.
HTML Client-side VBScript (*.html): Flowchart the code within <SCRIPT>...</SCRIPT> tags. Everything else is HTML.; Used when: Code is HTML but no ASP <% tag exists.
Plain (*.vbs): The code is flowcharted "as is" without HTML.; Used when: Code is not HTML.

When flowcharting a code snippet (not an entire file), select only the VBScript code, no HTML tags. Alternatively, include the opening tag <% or <SCRIPT> to make Visustin correctly detect the language mode.

If the code contains both server-side and client-side scripts, server-side scripts are flowcharted while client-side scripts are ignored. Remove <%...%> to flowchart as client-side script.

Where the code mixes several scripting languages, only VBScript is flowcharted. Use JavaScript mode to flowchart JavaScript code.

The file extension (*.asp, *.html, *.vbs) has no actual meaning to Visustin.

Change note: Old Visustin versions (up to v5) supported a separate ASP mode for *.asp files and Visual Basic mode for plain VBScript. In this version, mode VBScript, ASP is appropriate for both.

Language-specific limitations

ASP.NET pages (.aspx) are not supported. However, the codebehind classes (.aspx.cs or .aspx.vb) are supported, as they are regular C# or VB.NET code.

Visual Basic binary files (VB 1.0-3.0) are not supported. Visustin cannot open binary files saved by VB versions 1.0 to 3.0. Save the files in text mode for Visustin or use Copy & Paste.

VBScript syntax Case x statement, where statement immediately follows x on the same line without a colon, is unsupported. Add the colon for a proper flow chart.