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>George,
>I probably would have said "That's not equivalent to a structure on any points."
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>
>Right. It looks like a structure/user-defined type, but you can't use it in the same way for the most crucial use of a structure.... which does indeed question it's usefulness. If I had a VFP data-object that could only be read by VFP, I couldn't really claim it was an ADO object, could I?

No, but you can use a user-defined class to assist in constructing a structure; that's exactly what Christof Lange's STRUCT does, and what CLSHeap provides a set of tools to assist in creation, retrieval and disassembly of structures. You might want to look at the summary of my "Pointers on Pointers" presentations posted on the wiki in the WednesdayNightLecture series.