Excel VBA: Range to String Array in 1 step

Question

I know you can easily take a range of cells and slap them into a Variant Array but I want to work with a string array (because it's single-dimensional and takes less memory than a Variant array).

Is there any way to automatically convert a range into a string array?

Right now I am using a function that will take the range and save the values in a variant array, then convert the variant array to a string array. It works nice , but I'm looking for a way to go directly from the range to string array. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Function RangeToArray(ByVal my_range As Range) As String()

Dim vArray As Variant
Dim sArray() As String
Dim i As Long

vArray = my_range.Value
ReDim sArray(1 To UBound(vArray))

For i = 1 To UBound(vArray)
    sArray(i) = vArray(i, 1)
Next

RangeToArray = sArray()

End Function 

UPDATE: It's looking like there is no way to skip the step of throwing the data into a variable array first before converting it to a single-dimensional string array. A shame if it's true (even if it doesn't take much effort, I like to ultra-optimize so I was hoping there was a way to skip that step). I'll close the question in a few days if no solution presents itself. Thanks for the helpful comments, guys!

UPDATE2: Answer goes to Simon who put in great effort (so did everyone else) and utlimately pointed out it's indeed impossible to go from range to string array in one shot. Thanks, everyone.

Answer 1

You actually can go directly from a range to an array using the functions Split, Join and a delimiter not in the text.

Assuming you have already assigned a 1D range of values as SrcRange

Dim Array() As String: Array = Split(Join(Application.Transpose(SrcRange), "#"), "#")