Why can't check event instance is nothing?

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In C# I can check whether an event instance is nothing or not

public event SomeEvent SomeClickEvent;
if (SomeClickEvent != null)
{
}

But when I do this in VB it returns an error message

Public Event SomeClickEvent As SomeEvent

If Not SomeClickEvent Is Nothing Then

End If

Error Message: Public Event SomeClickEvent is an event, and cannot be called
directly. Use an RaiseEvent statement to raise an event.

Hope some one can give insights into this.

[Tom Shelton]

On 2008-01-16, Patrick <Pa*****@discussions.microsoft.comwrote:

In C# I can check whether an event instance is nothing or not

public event SomeEvent SomeClickEvent;
if (SomeClickEvent != null)
{
}

But when I do this in VB it returns an error message

Public Event SomeClickEvent As SomeEvent

If Not SomeClickEvent Is Nothing Then

End If

Error Message: Public Event SomeClickEvent is an event, and cannot be called
directly. Use an RaiseEvent statement to raise an event.

Hope some one can give insights into this.

The reason you usually do that in C# is that, you want to raise the
event without getting null reference exception :) You don't have that
problem in VB.NET - since RaiseEvent will take care of it for you, so
it's safe to just raise the event without checking...

That said, why do you need to check this?

--
Tom Shelton