Unmanaged DLLs and string (or char*) output parameters

I wrestled with this one for awhile, but discovered (via Google) that you can use StringBuilder to allocate a fixed-length string, then pass the StringBuilder in by value to the exported function/method in the unmanaged DLL. Strings don't work in this case because they are not fixed length, and access violation errors can (and usually) occur.

Declare Ansi Function Function_Name Lib "lib.dll" (ByVal strGoingIn As String, ByVal strComingOut As StringBuilder) As Integer

Viewing exports for a DLL

Open a Visual Studio Command Prompt, navigate to the directory of the DLL to inspect, and use the following command:

dumpbin /export whatever.dll