Forums Scripts & Popups a few DLL question

I'm writing a DLL with Visual Basic. This is the first one I've written, and I'm not sure how to use it in mIRC once it's written. It's going to return weather conditions for a specific zip code. My question is how do I store the information that is returned? Can I assign it to a variable? Also, will mIRC's max variable length be a problem if it's too long? This next question might be more of a VB question, but when writing the DLL, can I use multiple "return" lines, and on the mIRC side, assign it to several variables to deal with the length issue? Thanks.

//set %weather = $dll(weather.dll,temp,<some zip>)

If that's not what you meant then I guess they were both VB questions.

-Andy

That's the answer I wanted. Thanks I figured it was probably something like that but I wasn't sure. I also wanted to know if there was anything I could do on the mIRC side of it if the text is too long for one mIRC variable. Thanks for answering my question.

There are two possibilitiesfor handling the "string too long error", which mIRC generates if the data in the variable and the variable name is greater than about 950 characters (I don't recall the exact number) that I'm aware of.
1) Use a binary variable for the storage
2) put the data into a hash table

Personally, I like the second of those two as I've never managed to quite grasp how binary variables work.

How would you load the response from a DLL into a hash table? This is my first time working with DLLs, but it seems to me like the DLL would throw all the data at you at once, so I'm not sure how you could handle it.

Russel... Whats the best way of explaining what a "Hash Table" is?

I have opened one of them in notepad, and they are full if digits, is it like a mIRC page file?

They can be digits or other data. It's sort of like a database. You could have a hash table that stores something like this:
Name, Email Address. Then you could search the hash table for "Blake" and the data associated for me would be my email address.