The MSDN library that you can buy, or it comes with Visual Studio has massive amounts of documentation. It isn't free, however. It may be worth it if it allows you to do it much faster. Try Microsoft Developer Network to see if there is anything on there Josh Koppang

Thanks, that's probably it. I may well be looking at too generic a message too. I'll give it a go tonight.

You could get a pointer to the first view, and then call myView->GetParentFrame(). There may be a more acceptable way, but this is the one I thought of first.

The stuff that happens without copy ctor looks like bug. Behavior with copy ctor defined may be optimization - the exception object is created 'in-place' once. Tomasz Sowinski -- http://www.shooltz.com

This works for me (VC6 SP5). Pointer to member representation set to "Best case always" in Settings/C++/C++ language. class CXMLNode { public: char *p1; char *p2; }; class AttributeInt { char * CXMLNode::*m_units; public: AttributeInt(char * CXMLNode::*units = NULL) : m_units(units) {} void test() { if (m\_units == NULL) { printf("m\_units is NULL\\n"); } else { printf("m\_units is not NULL\\n"); } } }; void main( void ) { AttributeInt a; a.test(); AttributeInt b(&CXMLNode::p1); b.test(); } Tomasz Sowinski -- http://www.shooltz.com

Yes, and it was quite helpfull in clarifying the situation but it doesn't give me the kind of solution I want. What I really want to do is put an _existing_ view into a pane. To have a small set of view objects and plug in the appropriate one at the appropriate time. Unfortunately there's no "SetPane" method. This (to my mind) baddly designed CreateView method insists on creating a new view every time it's called. It looks to me like having this CRuntimeClass structure they are so pleased with they just couldn't resist using it. And, AFAIKS, it makes the call far less flexible without simplifying it a jot. If you wanted to create a new view for a pane it could just as easilly have been done something like SetPain(0, 1, new CFormView(ID_DLG), .. Subsequent to posting the query I've tracked down another improved splitter class, which allows several views to be added to the splitter and switched between written by Caroline Englebienne. I'm hopeful that will fill the bill. It still looks like a clumsy work arround for something which could so easilly have been made simple.