Microsoft KB Archive/199824

= How To Get the Address of Variables in Visual Basic =

Article ID: 199824

Article Last Modified on 7/1/2004

-

APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Learning Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Professional Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition
 * Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition

-



This article was previously published under Q199824



SUMMARY
It is uncommon for a Visual Basic programmer to need to obtain low level information on a variable, such as its memory address. However, there are some API functions that require such information. This article describes the following Visual Basic functions that may help a Visual Basic programmer obtain this information:

VarPtr - Returns the address of a variable.

VarPtrArray - Returns the address of an array.

StrPtr - Returns the address of the UNICODE string buffer.

VarPtrStringArray - Returns the address of an array of strings.

ObjPtr - Returns the pointer to the interface referenced by an object variable.



MORE INFORMATION
WARNING: One or more of the following functions are discussed in this article; VarPtr, VarPtrArray, VarPtrStringArray, StrPtr, ObjPtr. These functions are not supported by Microsoft Technical Support. They are not documented in the Visual Basic documentation and are provided in this Knowledge Base article "as is." Microsoft does not guarantee that they will be available in future releases of Visual Basic.

VarPtr
This function can be used to get the address of a variable or an array element. It takes the variable name or the array element as the parameter and returns the address. However, you should be aware that unlocked Dynamic Arrays may be reallocated by Visual Basic, so you must be very careful when you use VarPtr to get the address of an array element.

The following example gets the address of a variable:

Dim lngVariableAddress as Long Dim dblMyVariable as Double lngVariableAddress = VarPtr(dblMyVariable)

This example gets the address of the fourth element of an array:

Dim lngElementAddress as Long Dim lngArrayOfLongs(9) as Long ' following will get address of 4th element lngElementAddress = VarPtr(lngArrayOfLongs(3))

Limitations: The VarPtr function cannot be used to get the address of an array. For more information, see the VarPtrArray function.

VarPtrArray
Arrays in Visual Basic are stored as SAFEARRAYs. To get the address of the SAFEARRAY structure, you need to use the VarPtrArray function. The following are the Visual Basic 5.0 and Visual Basic 6.0 declarations respectively:

Declare Function VarPtrArray Lib "msvbvm50.dll" Alias "VarPtr" _ (Var as Any) As Long

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

To get the address of a SAFEARRAY, pass the SAFEARRAY name (including the parenthesis) to the VarPtrArray function:

Dim lngSafeArrayAddress as Long Dim lngArrayOfLongs(9) as Long lngSafeArrayAddress = VarPtrArray(lngArrayOfLongs)

Limitations: The VarPtrArray function cannot be used to get the address of an array of Strings, because Visual Basic does UNICODE/ANSI conversion for Strings. If you use VarPtrArray on an array of Strings, you will get the address of a temporary ANSI copy of the array. For more information, see the VarPtrStringArray function.

StrPtr
Strings in Visual Basic are stored as BSTR's. If you use the VarPtr on a variable of type String, you will get the address of the BSTR, which is a pointer to a pointer of the string. To get the address of the string buffer itself, you need to use the StrPtr function. This function returns the address of the first character of the string. Take into account that Strings are stored as UNICODE in Visual Basic.

To get the address of the first character of a String, pass the String variable to the StrPtr function.

Example:

Dim lngCharAddress as Long Dim strMyVariable as String strMyVariable = "Some String" lngCharAddress = StrPtr(strMyVariable)

You can use this function when you need to pass a pointer to a UNIOCODE string to an API call.

VarPtrStringArray
VarPtrStringArray gets the address of an array of Strings. To avoid the intrinsic UNICODE/ANSI conversion performed by Visual Basic, the declaration has to be defined in a type library.

Alternatively, you could use the MIDL compiler to compile your own type library from the following .odl files.

For Visual Basic 6.0, create a text file named VB6ptrlib.odl with the content below:

[ uuid(C6799410-4431-11d2-A7F1-00A0C91110C3), lcid (0), version(6.0), helpstring("VarPtrStringArray Support for VB6") ] library PtrLib { importlib ("stdole2.tlb"); [dllname("msvbvm60.dll")] module ArrayPtr {  [entry("VarPtr")] long RTCALL VarPtrStringArray([in] SAFEARRAY (BSTR) *Ptr); } }
 * 1) define RTCALL _stdcall

For Visual Basic 5.0, create a text file named VB5ptrlib.odl with the content below:

[ uuid(6E814F00-7439-11D2-98D2-00C04FAD90E7), lcid (0), version(5.0), helpstring("VarPtrStringArray Support for VB5") ] library PtrLib { importlib ("stdole2.tlb"); [dllname("msvbvm50.dll")] module ArrayPtr {  [entry("VarPtr")] long RTCALL VarPtrStringArray([in] SAFEARRAY (BSTR) *Ptr); } }
 * 1) define RTCALL _stdcall

Use the following command lines to compile the preceding .odl files with the MIDL compiler to create a Visual Basic 6.0 or Visual Basic 5.0 type library (.tlb) file respectively:

MIDL /t VB6ptrlib.odl MIDL /t VB5ptrlib.odl

To use the VarPtrStringArray function in your project, you need to create a reference to the type library you just created.

Example:

Dim MyArrayOfStrings(2) As String Dim AddressOfArray As Long MyArrayOfStrings(0)="AAA" MyArrayOfStrings(1)="BBB" AddressOfArray = VarPtrStringArray ( MyArrayOfStrings )

ObjPtr
ObjPtr takes an object variable name as a parameter and obtains the address of the interface referenced by this object variable.

One scenario of using this function is when you need to do a collection of objects. By indexing the object using its address as the key, you can get faster access to the object than walking the collection and using the Is operator. In many cases, the address of an object is the only reliable thing to use as a key.

Example:

objCollection.Add MyObj1, CStr(ObjPtr(MyObj1)) ... objCollection.Remove CStr(ObjPtr(MyObj1))

Additional query words: kbDSupport

Keywords: kbhowto KB199824

-

[mailto:TECHNET@MICROSOFT.COM Send feedback to Microsoft]

© Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.