TextArea SelText = nothing

Hi again, 2° test program; a Terminal which interfaces an external box through the serial port. I send a single character command and get a variable lenght answer.
I wish to show the IN/OUT strings in the TextArea with different colors. I did it in the past with VB6 and a Rich Text window. My O.S. is Win7.

The problem I have is with ‘selected text’. This is the code for the Serial input (Area is the TextArea) :

[code] dim ch as String, currPos, newPos as integer,

//these are for debugging only
dim leng as Integer
dim sText as String
dim sLen as Integer

	ch = Me.ReadAll(Encodings.ASCII)
	
	if  AscB(ch)=clearScreen then
			Area.Text=""
	else
			currPos=Area.SelStart  //start of selection
			Area.AppendText ( ch)
			newPos=Area.SelStart  //end position of new text
			leng = newPos-currPos
			Area.SelLength = leng 
			sLen  = Area.SelLength  //for testing
			sText = Area.SelText       //for testing
			Area.SelTextColor= &c0000ff00
	end if[/code]

The current text is not rendered in color; all the subsequent text will be in blue
Debugging the code I see:
leng = 165 //ok
sLen=1
sText = empty

It appears that the ‘Area.SelLength = leng’ row does nothing

Possibly another stupid error my side…which?

shouldn’t it be

leng = Len(ch)
newPos = currPos + leng

plus I believe SelLength is reset the instant you append text

SOLVED

There was a line missing:

Area.SelStart = currPos Area.SelLength = leng
I did not reset the selection to the beginning of incoming text

I should avoid to code late at night !

Pls excuse me