What does the Call keyword do in VB6?

Question

There's some code in our project that looks a bit like this:

Private Sub Method1()
    Call InnerMethod
End Sub

Private Sub Method2()
    InnerMethod
End Sub

Private Sub InnerMethod()
    '' stuff
End Sub

What's the advantage of doing Method1 over Method2?

Answer 1

From the MSDN:

You are not required to use the Call keyword when calling a procedure. However, if you use the Call keyword to call a procedure that requires arguments, argumentlist must be enclosed in parentheses. If you omit the Call keyword, you also must omit the parentheses around argumentlist. If you use either Call syntax to call any intrinsic or user-defined function, the function's return value is discarded.

For example:

Sub Proc1()
    Debug.Print "Hello World"
End Sub

Sub Proc2(text As String)
    Debug.Print "Hello " & text
End Sub

In the immediate window, if you enter

Proc1

then "Hello World" prints. If you enter

Call Proc1

then "Hello World" prints. If you enter

Proc2 "World"

then "Hello World" prints. If you enter

Call Proc2 "World" 

you get a compile error. You would have to enter

Call Proc2("World")