Jim B,

>The release command should only release the variable it is told to release. It should not NULL any other variables. It is a perfectly sound OO design to have multiple objects sharing another object. It is also valid to release the variables when you are through with them. If ObjA and ObjB are sharing an instance of ObjC and ObjB releases its variable you are saying that ObjA should also lose its reference to ObjC and that ObjC should be released from memory.

>That, to me, would be a horrible side effect of releasing a variable.

Here you and Jim N strongly disagree. I do find it acceptable if this behaviour could be set in for example a SET FORCERELEASE ON|OFF command. Jim N's argument is that MS did state that the RELEASE command was the way to release objects, But it doesn't do this unconditionally. This should be noted in the help file, but it isn't. The error MS made might be this suggestion to use the RELEASE command to release objects. IMHO we alway should use the release method to release an object.

Walter,