If you type help IF at the Windows 7 command-line (can launch this by searching at Windows Start menu search box for “Command” or by typing cmd there and pressing ENTER), you get in one of the help pages printed out for the batch files’ IF command: %ERRORLEVEL% will expand into a string representation of [...]

Just got bitten by the following: Dim takeN As Integer = If(Integer.TryParse(EdTake.Text, takeN), takeN, itemsCount) I had used that instead of writing in 2 lines: Dim takeN As Integer If not Integer.TryParse(EdTake.Text, takeN) then takeN = itemsCount However, there’s an important difference: “If” is a function, so its arguments are evaluated at ...