>That's true - I agree that this could be seen in this way - but it looks like a kind >of philosophical issue to me. To prove the "common"-way of handling this - I created a >C#-sample which shows that C# (I now found a real application for .NET for me ! ;-)) >handles the same issue in the way I would expect it...

Ok ok - it is not the same issue - it is just a protected property holding an object ref which behaves in the same way vfp does.