>A Java programmer needs to call a VFP program that is compile as an EXE. Let's say that value returned from the EXE process is a numeric 6.
>
>How can the Java program read the return value from the call to the FoxPro EXE?

There should be several ways to do this. One way would be to write the result to a file (either ASCII text, or maybe a Fox2x table if Java can read them) which the Java app then reads.

Ed Rauh's Exiting Visual FoxPro returning an error level FAQ #7767 can set an OS-level errorlevel as VFP exits, this is handy for batch files but maybe less so for other environments. If the Java app is calling a VFP process on another computer this won't work.

Is there any way the Java app could call the VFP process as a COM object? This would probably be the most elegant. Other than that there may be other interprocess communication methods you could try. I seem to recall George Tasker working with VFP and DDE, which is now a rather dated IPC method in Windows but might be supported in Java.