If I understand correctly, you can only pass string objects to exported functions if the dll was explicitly loaded via LoadLibrary?

Matthew Busche wrote: There are built-in data types (e.g., int, float, char*, etc) and there are objects. I'm looking for a commonly used term that refers to either. Is there such a term? Intrinsic types are built-in. Five birds are sitting on a fence. Three of them decide to fly off. How many are left?

Much thanks to Peter Molnar for mailing me a completely trivial DevStudio project containing a DllMain() that got properly invoked. What I was missing (and what I had never seen documented) was the APIENTRY declaration for the DLL entry point function. The DllMain must be declared like this: BOOL APIENTRY DllMain(HINSTANCE , DWORD , LPVOID ) Once those 8 pesky characters were added, it worked great. Also, for those who care, this works independently of the application type (i.e., works for both console apps and windows apps) and (as Peter said in an earlier message on this thread) works independently of how the library is loaded. (I.e., you can use either load-time dynamic linking or run-time dynamic linking.) Matt

Matthew Busche wrote: You never mentioned anything about dllimport you asked how to export ;) You guessed well. Generally, the technique is the following: use one header file for both your DLL and your application. In it, define something like #if _MY_DLL #define MYDDL_WHATEVER _declspec(dllexport) #else #define MYDDL_WHATEVER _declspec(dllimport) Then, in the header, use: extern MYDDL_WHATEVER int x; In the settings of the DLL project, define the preprocessor definition MYDDL_WHATEVER. Et hop, it's done :) You could also take a look to this article[^], it may contain useful info. Matthew Busche wrote: Thanks again for your help. It was most helpful. My pleasure, and welcome on Codeproject! :-D K. Le temps se perd, "Si" n'existe pas Tous les remords n'y changeront rien Le temps se perd, "Si" n'existe pas Donc à présent le choix reste mien