I don't think you can do that in any OOP language because it would breake object encapsulation. The property doesn't exists by itselff, it belongs to the object. It means you can access it only thru the object. If you could pass property by reference than you would be able to "disconnect" property from the object because you would be able to reference it directly. Can you call it a property after that?

>Sergey,
>
>Thanks!!
>
>Is there a reason for this limitation. In other words is there a design issue that would make it wrong to allow for this. How do other languages handle it? Why the distinction between allowing the object itself to be passed by reference, but not an object property?
>
>Where can I find some good documentation on these behaviors?
>
>>Visual FoxPro always passes object properties by value. Object properties cannot be passed by reference.
>>
>>>I am attempting to write code to allow one class use another classes' objects.
>>>
>>>I have a class bctblhandler that needs to use the methods of another class, tblhandler. bctblhandler has a property, tblhandlerIVN, which stands for for tblhandler Instance Var Name.
>>>
>>>so I can say:
>>>
>>>obctblhandler.tblhandlerIVN=otblhandler
>>>
>>>But I wanted to write a procedure that would allow me to cross reference the two generically. So I wrote:
>>>
>>>XrefClass(@obctblhandler.tblhandlerIVN,otblhandler)
>>>
>>>procedure xrefclass
>>>parameters toIVN, tobject
>>>toIVN=tobject
>>>
>>>
>>>endproc
>>>
>>>but this didn't work. When calling it I get, alias obctblhandler does not exist.
>>>
>>>so I had to write:
>>>
>>>XrefClass('obctblhandler.tblhandlerIVN',otblhandler)
>>>
>>>procedure xrefclass
>>>parameters toIVN, tobject
>>>store tobject to &toIVN
>>>endproc
>>>
>>>instead.
>>>
>>>
>>>What am I doing wrong? BTW, tblhandlerIVN is not defined as protected or hidden.
>>>
>>>TIA