>Bummer! It's REALLY annoying since MS recommends using safearrays to pass data across COM boundries and then they don't put the support in VFP. I use VFP to provide data services to C++ and VB OLE clients and also call on same and it only provides ammo for the anti-Fox zealots to point out these shortcomings. The C++ developers in-house can work around these things, but outside developers tend to want to work in certian ways(translation: VB compatible methods) and it causes me a world of headaches.
>
>Oh well, life ain't supposed to be easy.
>
>Thanks for the response.
>
>Gary Foster
>Pointsource Consulting Inc.
>gary_foster@starkey.com

Gary,

One of the things that I have learned in my 18+ years of doing software development is to be patient. All things come in their time. VFP6 is better than VFP5 in that it can pass any array around COM. VFP7 will be even better I'm sure. I am also sure that VFP7 will have holes and flaws that we can pick on too, just VFP6 and VFP5 before it.

Considering that VFP6 is fully backword compatible with prior versions, and it provides all this new stuff too without breaking the compatibility, is an accomplishment for the VFP developers at MS.

As I understand it the limitations encountered are related to the general architecture of VFP6 and that is why they won't be changed in this version. For example, the internals of VFP would need to be greatly modified to change the way VFP handles arrays in order to allow safearrays.