VB6 IIf advantage

Question

Is there a performance advantage to using IIf over If?

Other than simply less code... what is the difference between :

If msInitialFloodSection <> Trim$(cboFloodSection.Text) Then
    mbFloodSectionChanged = True
Else
    mbFloodSectionChanged = False
End If

and

mbFloodSectionChanged = IIf(msInitialFloodSection <> Trim$(cboFloodSection.Text), True, False)

Answer 1

IIf is not an operator or a language construct, it's a function, just like any other function such as Left. It will therefore evaluate all its arguments at all times, whereas with If you will only evaluate the correct branch.

Example:

denominator = 0
value = IIf(denominator = 0, 0, value / denominator)

This will raise Divizion by zero error despite a separate branch exists for denominator being zero.

Regarding performance, what it will do is packing your values into Variants which will require additional ticks, not that much at all, but if we're on performance, then If will be faster because it wouldn't coerce things through Variants and because it will only calculate one of the values, not two.