Bernie wrote:

> The reason I make a local copy of the AE is I get a "Can't use a  
> register variable..." on compile.

Just use # to pass the incoming pointer (theItem as ^AEDesc) to  
AECoerceDesc and AEGetDescData:

err = fn AECoerceDesc( #theItem, _typeFSRef, #theItem )
long if ( fn AEGetDescData( #theItem, @ref, sizeof(FSRef) ) == _noErr )

Robert P.