>Thanks Cetin (and Hilmar too). i understand a little of what you and Hilmar have said about the problem with forms being used with public variables. it is good to know that this is a "proper" way of returning multiple variables. i spent a lot of yesterday going back and redoing my code to use this method. once i realized that i didn't have to assign an additional variable to the properties of the object in the calling program (as mentioned in my previous post), it is much easier.
>
>BTW, the "empty" object doesn't come from kilofox. it came from the "what's new in vfp8.0". i think kilofox only dealt with 6.0 and the 1002 things deals with 7.0. no big deal - i have learned a lot from them.
>
>Thanks again,
>
>Paul

I invented in old days 'empty' this way:)

create cursor myParams (param1 l, param2 l) && as many as I needed
scatter name oParms blank
use in myParams
oParms.Param1 = date() && VFP doesn't care if it was created logical in the first place

Cetin