How to cast an PSafeArray item into its original type

Question

Hi

I am using an COM in Delphi 7 that was created in C# and one of the methods of a class return an array of an type. However, when Delphi imports it, instead of an array of that type I get an PSafeArray.

How can I cast the items of that array into its base type?

I've tried to use SafeArrayGetElement but I couldn't find a way of casting the item into its original type.

Answer 1

I don't know exactly how Delphi handles the type library interpretation, but a SAFEARRAY has an associated type.

If you can view the type library for the C# assembly, you can probably glean the underlying type from there.

If not, you can call SafeArrayGetVarType on the array to get its associated type at run-time (this has had problems on SAFEARRAYs created by some APIs, though, so you may get garbage back.)

Most likely, though, it is exposed as a SAFEARRAY of VARIANT where every item is of a "dynamic" type.

Do you know if you can process VARIANTs in Delphi?