Returning a VB ScriptingObject to Perl app

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Howdy: I wrote a dll in VB and I have a perl script that is calling it. In the dll I build a Scripting.Dictionary and I want to return it to the Perl script. I cannot get this to work for the life of me. The following is the VB method that I a trying to call:

Public Function returnScriptingObj1() As Object 

    Dim tot As Object
    
    Dim debugFile As Integer
    debugFile = FreeFile
    Open "d:\debug1.txt" For Output As #debugFile
    
    Print #debugFile, "TEST"
    Set tot = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary") 
    
    tot.Add "tom", "daddy" 
    tot.Add "Ginger", "mommy" 
    tot.Add "Caroline", "kiddy" 
    
    Close #debugFile 
    
    Set returnScriptingObj1 = tot 
    'returnScriptingObj1 = tot 
End Function
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The following is the Perl code:

my $newObj = Win32::OLE->new("TestArray.PArray");
my $resultsArray; #= Variant(VT_BYREF, Variant(VT_EMPTY));
$resultsArray = $newObj->returnScriptingObj1();
print Dumper($resultsArray);<br>
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The following is the output from the perl code above:

$VAR1 = bless( {
                 'Item' => undef,
                 'Count' => 3,
                 'CompareMode' => 0
               }, 'Win32::OLE' );
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First is it possible to get the Scripting.Dictionary object back to the Perl script? If so, what is missing?
Please help...
Thanks, Tom

Edit: added <code> tags. larsen

Comment on Returning a VB ScriptingObject to Perl app Select or Download Code

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Re: Returning a VB ScriptingObject to Perl app by Jenda (Abbot) on May 24, 2002 at 14:33 UTC
Yeah, that's exactly what I would expect. The VB method returned you an Object ... which gets wrapped by Win32::OLE as a Perl Win32::OLE object. And as such it cannot be displayed by Data::Dumper. You should use it as an object and that should be fine. Try `print $resultsArray->{tom}; or print $resultsArray ->Item(tom);` [download] and so forth. If you want to print all items in the Dictionary you may use the in() function contained in Win32::OLE : `use Win32::OLE qw(in); foreach my $key (in $resultsArray) { print $key, " => ", $resultsArray->{$key}, "\n"; }` [download] Jenda	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Returning a VB ScriptingObject to Perl app by sparkyichi (Deacon) on May 24, 2002 at 12:09 UTC
Would `#=` comment out the rest of the line? Sparky FMTEYEWTK	[reply] [d/l]