Thanks Jooel.
I have certainly seen posts by people wanting to pass to by reference but haven't seen anyone mention pointers directly. I guess what I was trying add was that I would prefer the syntax of creating a pointer rather than using ByRef and ByVal in functions.

As for spawning threads, this would be very useful especially for KiXforms apps. I would love to be able to keep the GUI from freezing when waiting for long running external calls.