Hi All,

I'm writing a DLL that will store (from VB) a machine name then share that between other methods in the DLL - but i've run into a problem in that I can share int types but the machine name is a problem - when i try to retrieve a set value i get a series of char such as /?> and if i try again I get , - this is consistent regardless of the data i send. If I set the machine name in the declarion or within the method (SET_CORBA_SERVER) It Works - but not if i store it then call it from another procedure (Ints work all the time).

Any suggestions people can make will be more than welcome - it's one of those silly little problems.

The code for the DLL is:

#include "stdafx.h"
#include "string.h"

char *CORBASERVERNAME;
char *CORBAPORTNUMBER;
int testdata;

BOOL APIENTRY DllMain( HANDLE hModule,
                       DWORD ul_reason_for_call,
                       LPVOID lpReserved
                     )
{
    return TRUE;
}

int _stdcall GET_SECONDS_FROM_SERVER(int serverSensorID)
{
return testdata;
}

int _stdcall SET_SECONDS_ON_SERVER(int serverSensorID , int updatedSecondsLevel )
{
    testdata = updatedSecondsLevel;
}

int _stdcall SET_CORBA_SERVER(char *newPort)
{
    CORBASERVERNAME = newPort;
}

char* GET_CORBA_SERVER()
{
    return CORBASERVERNAME;
}

The problem is that you are storing pointers to memory over which you have no control in CORBASERVERNAME and CORBAPORTNUMBER. The value received by SET_CORBA_SERVER() points to the contents of a VB string that is probably re/deallocated very soon after the function returns.

You must store a copy of what this function receives. The simplest solution is to change CORBASERVERNAME and CORBAPORTNUMBER to fixed length buffers
char CORBASERVERNAME[xx]; //'xx' and 'yy' are suitably generous sizes
char CORBAPORTNUMBER[yy];
and do
lstrcpyn(CORBASERVERNAME, newPort, sizeof(CORBASERVERNAME) - 1);
in SET_CORBA_SERVER(). (Use lstrcpyn(), not strncpy() for this. lstrcpyn() always null-terminates the string it copies, strncpy() doesn't.)

I also recommend that you declare newPort to be const char* to clarify that it is not written through by SET_CORBA_SERVER(). For a similar reason the return value of GET_CORBA_SERVER() should be const char* too.

-Evan Burkitt