It's not undefined - it's initialized to the default value.

>It's undefined. See message #1583740
>
>>I see your point. With the out param, where does the return value show up in the debugger? I don't remember what it was I ran into that drew me to the by ref but it seems it had to something to do with debugging. The out param is not defined before the call to the function, is it? I really need to look at all that again as I realize now there is some stuff there I'm fuzzy on having not used that signature for a while.