Boris Jabes [MSFT]

I love that hat.

jsampson, I totally agree! I hope people don't think I'm depressed or something It sure seems like I'm feeling down and my hair gets a fair amount of screen time... Ah well, the joys of C9!

Trackerball, I was definitely not trying to skirt the issue, it's more that I was not always expecting those questions  The short answer to your question is this:

- a managed class (ref class A {}) can only hold pointers to native types
- a native class (class B {}) can not hold a managed handle directly, instead you should use gcroot<T> as follows:

#include <vcclr.h>
using namespace System;

class B {
public:
   gcroot<String^> str;   // can use str as if it were String^
   B() {}
};

int main() {
   B b;
   b.str = gcnew String("hello");
   Console::WriteLine( b.str );   // no cast required
}

I hope that answers the question. If you want to learn more, I gave a talk about interop at Tech-Ed and I have some posts about it over at http://blogs.msdn.com/borisj.

-- Boris