Hi Peter,
I'm sorry: I can't think which language uses "->" instead of "." and
also uses "char *", so I may be misunderstanding your question entirely.
1) If you've got an Access Textbox (on an Access form), its .Text
property is only available when the textbox is selected. Otherwise you
must use .Value. (This is because Access controls are not conventional
Windows controls; most of the time Access just displays a picture of the
control, only creating it as a window when it's selected.)
2) For this and other reasons I doubt whether it's possible to use a
pointer to access a property of a control, if that's what you're trying
to do. But it should be possible to create a reference to the control at
least in some languages.
