I am trying to write some signals created through a Power Basic Dll in text file (as well as transmit them using TCP/IP to a local DB).. I ve already done that, quite well and your forum was really very helpful.

My problem is that I cant successfully convert:...
1. @a_psDataRec.pszSymbol
2. @a_psDataRec.psDate
... to valid string values.

I suspect that these values are in char* format and they should be treated as BSTR values, but I am not sure about it. And even if I was sure I still dont know how to make BSTR->STR conversion in Power Basic.
I tried STR$() function but no success there...
The reason I am using Power Basic (which I hardly know) over C++ for this particular DLL is the very easy to use TCP implementation. The rest of the code (TCP Server, etc is in C++).

So, anyone has a solution to this?

You are right, they are indeed char* values. In Power Basic they are called ASCIIZ values.
And since there is no c_str in Power Basic (as I learnt today) I manually iterated through each char in ASCIIZ (pszSymbol) using the MID$ function and added it to a (normal) string buffer thus forming the actual string symbol that I can finally transmit to my server..... pheww (another 2 hours of my life lost over nothing... hehe)

Thank you for making it clear that these were char* values. You pointed me to the right direction.

Note: For some reason the Power Basic for DLL [censored]es if you directly try to manipulate @a_psDataRec.pszSymbol with MID$, so just put it in an another local asciiz of yours and play with that (quite simple really)

LOCAL s_Symbol AS ASCIIZ PTR
LOCAL fxSymbol AS STRING
LOCAL i_Len AS INTEGER

s_Symbol = @a_psDataRec.pszSymbol
i_Len = LEN(@a_psDataRec.pszSymbol)

fxSymbol = ""
FOR i = 1 TO i_Len
fxSymbol = fxSymbol + MID$(@s_Symbol,i,1)
NEXT i

Of course there could be another (more direct) way to do this, but since this one works, I ll go with it.