2.4. Strings

As in VB 6, VB 2005 String types are used to represent text and are a good example of a reference type, as you saw in "Variables," earlier in this chapter. Strings in .NET are immutable, which means that once you've assigned a value to a string variable, it cannot be changed. If the value of a string variable is changed, another string object is created during runtime. Consider this example:

	Dim st As String
	st = "Hello"
	st &= " World!"
	MsgBox(st) ' prints "Hello World!"