Custom Types and TMaps

Is there a way to create a TMap with a values of a custom type?

Example:

Type TCountry
	Field Hemi$
	Field People$
EndType

Map=CreateMap()
Local a:TCountry
	a.Hemi="West"
	a.People="American"
	MapInsert(Map,"america",a)
Local b:TCountry
	b.Hemi="East"
	b.People="Chinese"
	MapInsert(Map,"china",b)
Local c:TCountry
	c.Hemi="West"
	c.People="Canadian"
	MapInsert(Map,"canada",c)
Local d:TCountry
	d.Hemi="East"
	d.People="Indian"
	MapInsert(Map,"india",d)

Repeat
	In$=Input$()
	If MapContains(Map,In)
		Print "Hemisphere: "+MapValueForKey(Map,In).Hemi
		Print "People: "+MapValueForKey(Map,In).People
	Else
		Print "Not Recognised"
	EndIf
Until In=""

WOW! I searched and searched...gave up...created a topic...wandered around...found the solution ten minutes later.

Apparently you have to cast the value to the type.

		Print "Hemisphere: "+TCountry(MapValueForKey(Map,In)).Hemi
		Print "People: "+TCountry(MapValueForKey(Map,In)).People

Sure, all datastructures only return OBJECT, if you want to access anything on it, you first must have an object of your desired class again.

This gave me some grief at one point, too, until I got the hang of doing a type cast. One of the many things in BlitzMax that needs better documentation.

Mark could probably give himself a fairly big pay rise by giving the docs some serious love. Most people are put off from buying products with inadequate documentation.

Just to be nosey, might you consider making the hemisphere and possibly the people into types of their own? Storing the text string east/west/etc multiple times doesn't seem an efficient solution and is easy to make inconsistant.