Why can't I get this to work

[!NoItAll]

Friend Structure eMailMessageType
     Friend GoodMsg as System.Text.Stringbuilder
     Friend BadMsg as System.Text.StringBuilder
End Structure
 
Friend Function MakeMessage() as Boolean
 
      Dim Messages as New eMailMessageType
 
      Messages.GoodMsg.Append("Some Good Messages")
      Messages.BadMsg.Append("Some Bad Messages")
      'do something with the message struct here...   But it never gets here without an exception
 
      Return True
 
End Function
 
 

When I try to use this it says
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
use the new keyword to create an object reference

I've tried to use this every which way from Sunday (an inane American expression meaning "nearly every way I can"), but have just not been able to use the stringbuilder class in a structure.
I've tried it with and without the new declaration, as friend, as public...
I'd love a hint or two!

[!NoItAll]

Ok - after trying 1/2 the day yesterday and a bunch this morning I got it to work - so I will answer my own question in case someone finds it helpful in the future.
The issue appears that we need to initialize the member variables to the structure using the NEW keyword - not just the object itself. This requires a little more code in the creation of the object - but not a lot.
It's steeped in cryptic science (never used the "with" statement and curly brackets before), but it works. Perhaps someone else can suggest a better way - but here is the working version of my code sample from above:

Imports System.Text
---------------------------------------------------
   Public Structure eMailMessageType
        Public GoodMsg As StringBuilder
        Public BadMsg As StringBuilder
    End Structure
    Friend Messages As New eMailMessageType With {.BadMsg = New StringBuilder(), .GoodMsg = New StringBuilder()}
 
    Friend Function MakeMessage() As Boolean
 
        Messages.GoodMsg.AppendLine("Some Good Messages")
        Messages.BadMsg.AppendLine("Some Bad Messages")
 
       'now I can do something useful with Messages...
 
        Return True
 
    End Function
 

[Frinavale]

Sorry I didn't read this earlier.

In VB.NET there's not much of a difference between Structures and Objects....the line is very thin.

Anyways (even though you've already discovered this the hard way), just like Objects, Structures have to be instantiated using the "new" keyword.