(I also cut out pure COM stuff, namely portions of code concerning IUnknown and IDispatch.) I stick to what's done on the windows side for everything except for BSTR for which I set : typedef char WCHAR Typedef struct tagSAFEARRAYBOUND * LPSAFEARRAYBOUND Typedef unsigned short WCHAR // wc, 16-bit UNICODE character some Macintosh compilers don't define wchar_t in a convenient location, or define it as a char typedef wchar_t WCHAR // wc, 16-bit UNICODE character #include // needed for gcc analogues of _int64 and unsigned _int64 I finally mimicked a VARIANT structure in a VARIANT.h file as you can see in the following code : #ifndef VARIANT_H Passing a VARIANT from mac OS X Excel 2011 VBA to c++, Taking into account remark 2 and as 'using VARIANT under os x' was my long-term goal, see for instance : It uses null-terminated char* strings instead. As a corollary of the fact that what I described above works, we know now that Excel 2011 VBA on a mac os x does not exchange strings with a dylib using the same in-memory format that a COM BSTR uses. So, is there something different between C++ functions toupper and tolower ? If so, what ? What's does explain this behaviour ? It also works as expected, but this time, putting a ByRef in front of the string in the signature instead of a ByVal doesn't provoke a runtime crash anymore. Even more strange : imagine I add a tolowerfunc in my dylib (same code as for toupperfunc but relying on ctype.h's tolower C++ function). Putting a ByRef instead would have produced a crash at runtime. Note the ByVal in front of the string in the sub's signature. Whereas on the VBA side (in excel 2011 for mac os x) I have this code : Declare Sub toupperfunc Lib '/path/to/the/dylib/thedylib.dylib' (ByVal str As String)Īnd executing it pop's out 'LUDWIG VON MISES' as expected. In the file thedylib.dylib, compiled as follows (office 2011 for mac os x is 32 bits) : g++ -m32 -Wall -g -c.

I want to receive the string from VBA, modify it in C++, and send it back, updated, to VBA. Now, I would like to do the same with strings, and first with just one string, not an array. Passing c/c++ dylib function taking pointer to VBA on mac I played a lot to passing arrays (of numerical built-in types) from VBA to the dylib (extension of dll's on mac os x) and updating them and sending them back to VBA, see for instance : Under mac os x I have office 2011 and its excel and VBA, and I have gcc-5.3.0's g++.

Excel mac os x