VB Forum / Win API / June 2008

Is it possible to do this in a TypeLib:

Declare Function VarPtrArray Lib "msvbvm60.dll" _
                            Alias "VarPtr" _
                            (Var() As Any) As Long

The problem is how to define the incoming array argument.
Tried all sorts of contructions, but nil successfull.
What does work is making different functions for the different datatypes,
so:

       [entry(0x60000001)]
       long _stdcall ByteArrayPointer([in] SAFEARRAY(unsigned char)*
ByteArray);

etc.

Doing:

       [entry(0x60000004)]
       long _stdcall ArrayPointer([in] SAFEARRAY(void*)* Array);

or:

       [entry(0x60000004)]
       long _stdcall ArrayPointer([in] SAFEARRAY(void*) Array);

Will show as the above Declare in VB, but it will give the following error:

Function or Interface marked as restricted or the function uses an
Automation type  not
supported in Visual Basic.

When I looked at another .tlb though, VBVM6Lib.tlb there is a function that
does work and
the .idl for this is:

 //
========================================================================
 // Function ArrPtr
 //
========================================================================
 // VarPtr alias for obtaining a pointer to an array's SAFEARRAY structure
 //
========================================================================
    [
        entry("VarPtr"),
        helpstring("Returns a pointer to the SAFEARRAY descriptor of any
Visual Basic array, except string arrays due

to Visual Basic's implicit Unicode/ANSI conversion. For string arrays, use
StrArrPtr.")
    ]
 long __stdcall ArrPtr([in] SAFEARRAY(void) * Ptr);

And this shows in the TypeLib editor from Matthew Curland like this:

[in] SAFEARRAY** of void

But this is something I can't do with the tlb editor and the Pointer level
box shows empty with the label
in red, suggesting there is something wrong there. So, is this a bug or a
limitation in Curland's tlb editor,
or is there a way to do this without using .idl?

RBS