Membership Operators

Membership operators check if a value is in a specified sequence. They return True if the value is present, otherwise False.

【Excel VBA】

Excel VBA uses the Like operator to check if a string matches a pattern (using wildcards). For example, check if a string is a digit:

Sub Test5()
    Debug.Print "3" Like "[0-9]"       ' Is it a digit?
    Debug.Print "F" Like "[a-zA-Z]"   ' Is it a letter?
    Debug.Print "好" Like "[一-龥]"   ' Is it a Chinese character?
    Debug.Print "adefb" Like "a*b"   ' Pattern "a*b": any characters between 'a' and 'b'
    Debug.Print "awb" Like "a?b"     ' Pattern "a?b": exactly one character between 'a' and 'b'
End Sub

Running the procedure outputs True in the Immediate Window.

Chapter 6 will introduce the InStr function, which checks if a substring exists in another string and returns the position of the first occurrence (0 if not found). For example, find "VBA" in "Hello,VBA!":

Sub Test6()
    Dim intI As Integer
    intI = InStr("Hello,VBA!", "VBA")  ' Find "VBA"
    Debug.Print intI  ' Output: 7(position of "VBA")
End Sub

【Python】

Common membership operators in Python are in and not in (Table 3-8).

Table 3-8 Membership Operators in Python

Examples:

>>> 1 in [1, 2, 3]          # Is 1 in the list?
True
>>> 'abc' in 'wofabcmn'     # Is 'abc' in the string?
True

For the wildcard effects of Excel VBA’s Like operator, Python uses regular expressions (not covered here).