Re: AfxGetApp() returns NULL

Generally, the use of members of CWinApp-derived classes is a good illustration of
exceptionally poor methodology. There's the "don't use global variables" rule, which is
misinterpreted as "put those variables in the CWinApp class and they're not global", which
is merely syntactic saccharine (not even as good as syntactic sugar) on marginal
methodology.

A good MFC program does not use the CWinApp class in any module except the implementation
of the CWinApp class.

Are you using threads? Is this happening when you call it from a thread?

I've not had this problem, but I never use the CWinApp-derived class outside the
CWinApp-derived implementation.

If a variable is logically global, make it global, don't throw it in the CWinApp class to
pretend it isn't global. The program gets simpler, the code gets simpler, and you remove
every #include statement of the CWinApp class header file from every .cpp file EXCEPT the
CWinApp-derived implementation file. So one thing I'd do (and I have done when confronted
with AfxGetApp() overuse) is just move those variables out of the CWinApp class.

Whenever I get a program, one metric of how bad the coding is can be obtained by how many
times AfxGetApp() is cast to the CWinApp-derived class. Each use costs 10 points on the
bad-style scale. Replacing AfxGetApp by thisApp increases it to 20 points each on the
bad-style scale (reason: it adds a kludge to a bad design).
                    joe