The documentation states:
quote:
The IADs::GetEx method retrieves from the property cache property values of a given attribute. The returned property values can have single or multiple values. Unlike the IADs::Get method, the property values are returned as a variant array of VARIANT, or a variant array of bytes for binary data. A property with a single value is then represented as an array of a single element
quote:
The IADs::Get method retrieves a property of a given name from the property cache. The property can be single-valued, or multi-valued. The property value is represented as either a variant for a single-valued property or a variant array (of VARIANT or bytes) for a property that allows multiple values.
The difference:
quote:
You can also use IADs::GetEx to retrieve property values from the property cache. However, the values are returned as a variant array of VARIANTs, regardless of whether they are single- or multi-valued. This means that ADSI makes an extra effort to package the returned property values in consistent data formats. This saves you, as a caller, some efforts to validate the data types when you are not sure whether the returned data has single or multiple values.
quote:
The IADs::Get and IADs::GetEx methods return a different variant structure for a single-valued property value. If the property is a string, IADs::Get will return a variant of string (VT_BSTR), whereas IADs::GetEx will return a variant array of a VARIANT type string with a single element. Thus, if you are not sure that a multi-valued attribute will return a single value or multiple values, you should use IADs::GetEx. As it does not require you to validate the result's data structures, you may want to use IADs::GetEx to retrieve a property of which you are not sure whether it is single-valued or multi-valued. The following table compares the difference in calling the two methods.
The User_Flags value is one of those items that stores many different properties. Using an equal sign to set the value as in your example would change the settings of all the other properties.

The syntax ($flags & 65536) check the current setting it does not set the value or flag. You would have to do a bitwise OR $flags = $flags | 65536 to set the value.

Please read my Win32Admin.DLL help or search the MSDN for more detail on User_Flags. In short each bit of the number represents a flag. It can be a "1" or a "0". The postion of the bit gives it its decimal value. I think that User_Flags is a 3 byte (24 bit) field. The example below uses 2 bytes (16 bits).


bit     Value   =   Value
 1         1    1    1
 2         2    0
 3         4    1    4
 4         8    0
 5        16    1   16
 6        32    0
 7        64    0
 8       128    0
 9       256    0
10       512    0
11      1024    0
12      2048    0
13      4096    1  4096
14      8192    0
15     16384    0
16     32768    0
-------------------------
User_Flags   =     4117


As you can see above changing the value of 4117 to some other multiple of 2 would set the other bits to "0" changing more than you wanted to change.

Read up on Binary operation if necessary.

[ 22. May 2003, 14:33: Message edited by: Howard Bullock ]
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