exposing an inner control

[csnyder]

I made three controls, a Peg, a Pegboard, and a Solution. There is a control array of Pegs on the Pegboard, and one Pegboard on the Solution. Now, my form has a Solution on it, and it needs to be able to access properties of the pegs. I did this by putting the following function in the pegboard control:

‘This is in PegBoard
Public Function GetPeg(i As Integer) As Peg
    If i > m_numOfPegs Then
        MsgBox "Error: invalid peg: " & i
        Exit Function
    End If
    
    Set GetPeg = Peg(i)
End Function

I can get this to work in my code for Solution easily:

       ‘This line in Solution works fine
        PegBoard.GetPeg(i).ShowColor (False)

I want the form to be oblivious of the fact that there’s an extra level of abstraction (the Pegboard). So I created a GetPeg function for the Solution control:

‘This is in Solution
Public Function GetPeg(Index As Integer) As Peg
    Set GetPeg = PegBoard.GetPeg(Index)
End Function

And want to directly access a peg from the solution like this:

‘This is in Form
   Dim p As Peg

    Set p = Solution.GetPeg(i)

But this causes an runtime error ‘13’ type mis-match. It seems that my mult-leveling is causing problems. Does anyone know if what I’m trying to do is possible? I guess I could expose my pegboard and use Solution.GetPegboard.GetPeg(i), but that’s clunky, and I would prefer not to do it that way.

Thanks.

[csnyder]

I am using VB 5, and have seen allusions to the fact that VB 6 was the first version that supports returning a user defined type. Are custom controls considered user defined types? It seem like this isn't the answer, though, because I did return a peg once.

[jim mcnamara]

No they are considered objects and as such you can pass them back and forth as a variant.

[csnyder]

Thanks, Jim, your reply definately put me on the right track. I found out that the problem doesn't seem to be with returning a Peg at all. Rather, the parameter Index needs to be a variant. I can't fathom why this would be. If anyone can explain the reasoning behind it, I'd love to hear it.

Thanks.