if the same item in all four comboboxes are chosen - arrays

Question

a newb practising more vb.net code.
I currently have four identical comboboxes named box1, box2, box3, box4.
in each of those comboboxes I have a list of words-
dog
cat
bird
fish
I've added these words through the 'properties'->'items'-->'collections' tab.
For now, I want to display a message- "you have 4 cats!" If the user selects the word 'cat' for all four comboboxes.
How would I write this code? I'm guessing I introduce a private function like 'onlycats' that sees if 'cat' is chosen for all 4 boxes... but I'm not to sure how to code based on what the user has chosen from the combobox.

Answer 1

So you want to count the selection of a ComboBox and present the results as a MsgBox after the User pressed a Button. You can do it like this:
Dim Selection(4) As String
Selection(0) = box1.Text
Selection(1) = box2.Text
Selection(2) = box3.Text
Selection(3) = box4.Text
MsgBox("You selected " & Selection.Where(Function(value) value = "dog").Count & " dogs!")
First of all I added everything to a Array and then search for a specific value and count it. You can count it like this:
Selection.Where(Function(value) value = "value").Count
The output is a Number. If "dog" is selected in all 4 boxes then the output is just 4 and you can write a Text around it. Hope it brings you on the right track.
============
If you just want to trigger something when 4 cats are selected then the count function also helps you. Just make a If Function
If Selection.Where(Function(value) value = "cat").Count = 4 Then
MsgBox("you have 4 cats!")
End If

Answer 2

Untested code but something like this:
sub CheckSame
if box2.SelectedValue = box1.SelectedValue
andalso box3.SelectedValue = box1.SelectedValue
andalso box4.SelectedValue = box1.selectedValue then
message.text = "You have 4 " & plural(box1.SelectedValue) & "!"
else
message.text = "You don't have 4 of the same animal"
end if
end sub
function plural(s as String) as String
select case s
case "fish"
return "fish"
case else
return s & "s"
end select
end function