[vb2008] Need arrays help

[revolution]

I was taught arrays a while back and have forgotten how to use them. I'm making a program that I plan on releasing here. The point of the program is to select what time you work, AM or PM, what time you get off work, AM or PM. It will then calculate your total hours (the program is for the entire week, not just one day) as well as input how much you make per hour. Will also create a text document, or append to one, and add to it your schedule for that week, the total hours, and how much money you should make, give or take a bit due to certain tax equations.

My problem is all the coding for each day of the week. I've only done Sunday and I'm already over 150 lines of code and I haven't even done time intervals yet, only whole hours (meaning I need to do 15, 30, 45 minutes and I only have set times for hours 1-12). I could simply copy and paste, replacing "sun" with "mon", "tue", etc, but I'm looking to optimize the coding.

There are 2 combo boxes for each day, and with the addition of the minute intervals, there will be 4. I need have an array, and I'm thinking also a For Next statement (i'm terrible with those) that will run through the days to add their amounts to the total hours.

If whoever's helping needs more information, let me know.

[rcadble]

I just spent a decent amount of time working on this -- I was able to create my own program with 7 pairs of inputboxes (sunday start time, sunday stop time, etc). I made it so on form load, these comboboxes are populated with times in 15 minute intervals(though this can be changed by you). I then wrote a function to calculate the total number of minutes working throughout the week.

Public Class TimeDifferenceFinder
    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        For i As Integer = 1 To 7
            LoadTimes(DirectCast(Me.Controls.Find("time" & i & "a", True)(0), ComboBox))
            LoadTimes(DirectCast(Me.Controls.Find("time" & i & "b", True)(0), ComboBox))
        Next
    End Sub
    Private Sub LoadTimes(ByRef cmbBox As ComboBox)
        For amhour As Integer = 1 To 11
            For amminute As Integer = 0 To 45 Step 15
                If amminute = 0 Then
                    cmbBox.Items.Add(amhour & ":00 AM")
                Else
                    cmbBox.Items.Add(amhour & ":" & amminute & " AM")
                End If
            Next
        Next
        For pmminute As Integer = 0 To 45 Step 15
            If pmminute = 0 Then
                cmbBox.Items.Add("12:00 PM")
            Else
                cmbBox.Items.Add("12:" & pmminute & " PM")
            End If
        Next
        For pmhour As Integer = 1 To 11
            For pmminute As Integer = 0 To 45 Step 15
                If pmminute = 0 Then
                    cmbBox.Items.Add(pmhour & ":00 PM")
                Else
                    cmbBox.Items.Add(pmhour & ":" & pmminute & " PM")
                End If
            Next
        Next
        For amminute As Integer = 0 To 45 Step 15
            If amminute = 0 Then
                cmbBox.Items.Add("12:00 AM")
            Else
                cmbBox.Items.Add("12:" & amminute & " AM")
            End If
        Next
    End Sub
    Private Function CalculateMins() As Integer
        Dim totalMins As Integer
        For i As Integer = 1 To 7
            Dim timeString As String = CalculateDifference(DirectCast(Me.Controls.Find("time" & i & "a", True)(0), ComboBox), DirectCast(Me.Controls.Find("time" & i & "b", True)(0), ComboBox))
            If (timeString.Substring(0, InStr(timeString, ":") - 1) * 60) < 0 Then
                totalMins += (((Val(timeString.Substring(0, InStr(timeString, ":") - 1) * 60) - timeString.Substring(InStr(timeString, ":"), 2)) + 1440))
            Else
                totalMins += (timeString.Substring(0, InStr(timeString, ":") - 1) * 60) + timeString.Substring(InStr(timeString, ":"), 2)
            End If
        Next
        Return totalMins
    End Function
    Private Function CalculateDifference(ByVal first As ComboBox, ByVal second As ComboBox) As String
        Dim firstTime As String = first.Text
        Dim secondTime As String = second.Text
        firstTime = Format(Date.Parse(firstTime), "HH:mm")
        secondTime = Format(Date.Parse(secondTime), "HH:mm")
        Dim T1 As Object
        T1 = New TimeSpan(firstTime.Substring(0, InStr(firstTime, ":") - 1), firstTime.Substring(InStr(firstTime, ":"), 2), 0)
        Dim T2 As Object
        T2 = New TimeSpan(secondTime.Substring(0, InStr(secondTime, ":") - 1), secondTime.Substring(InStr(secondTime, ":"), 2), 0)
        Return T2.Subtract(T1).ToString()
    End Function
    Private Sub cmdCalculate_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles cmdCalculate.Click
        MsgBox(CalculateMins)
    End Sub
End Class

Comboboxes are named time1a, time1b through time7a, time7b.

[revolution]

I'll have to test it out when I get home. My code was a lot longer than this, but that's because after trying the program, I wanted to make it so you could do like 3 PM in and 7 AM out and get only 4 hours. Went through and got everything working like it should along with several error messages such as negative hours (in at 7 pm, out at 3pm for example), 12 or 12+ hour shifts.

[rcadble]

Originally Posted by revolution

I'll have to test it out when I get home. My code was a lot longer than this, but that's because after trying the program, I wanted to make it so you could do like 3 PM in and 7 AM out and get only 4 hours. Went through and got everything working like it should along with several error messages such as negative hours (in at 7 pm, out at 3pm for example), 12 or 12+ hour shifts.

If you did 9:00 PM to 3:00 AM this will return 360 (6 hours = 360 minutes). So if you have the night shift, this'll still work.