Dll's

I am making my first dll, and i was wondering if any body could give me some pointers on how it is done, and i was wondering, how should i put something in my dll so that it has to be called the same way that anything else has to be called, ex.:

declare function getprivateprofilestring lib "something.dll" alias "getprivateprofilestinga" () as long

etc. the main thing that i am wondering is how i would have to put it in my dll if i wanted say the alias "MessagesA". but any help for a first timer with dll's is greatly appreciated, thanks.

“To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.” Marquis De Vauvenargues

The Declare statement is only used for normal DLLs which, I don't think, VB is capable of creating. DLLs created in VB are ActiveX DLLs. These are included in the Project by going to the Project Menu>References. You then find your DLL in the list and check it. Your functions and classes are now available in your project.

then what should i use to make a dll like that? I want to make a dll that everyone can make api calls to.

“To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.” Marquis De Vauvenargues

ActiveX DLLs can be used from any modern language.
If you must have a normal DLL then its off to C++ land for you images/icons/smile.gif.

i HEARD that in .net they are going ot have normal DLL's. I dont know if that's through. It was a while ago so it might be a myth or i might be remembering things. Do u kno if that's tru?

I don't know. I haven't started looking at .Net yet.

that's the new VB right? what does .Net mean?

It is the beginning of the end!! images/icons/smile.gif
Or its Microsoft's new way of scamming money out of people. .Net is many things. It is a new Run-time enviroment and associated programming languages (VS .Net). It is also a system (based on the new run-time enviroment) to allow Microsoft to rent software over the net.

There are other facets to it but this is the limit of my understanding.