Thomas and Fabio,

>>* assign the 'pointer' value to the var ONLY POSSIBLE WITH MACRO
>>* resulting in: tC12=1, tN31=2
>>  &cTmp=m.nCntr2

>really ?

>Store m.nCntr2 to (m.cTmp)

In the comments at the top I wrote that the code snippet is roughly a dozen years old and I bet there were no name expressions in FoxPro 2.6.

But for the purpose of really nailing the differences between macros, name expressions and EVAL(): You´re absolutely right.

>*Fabio:
>_VFP.Setvar(m.cTmp,m.nCntr2)

WHAT? If I want to assign a value to m.cTmp (NOT with the level of indirection we´re talking about) I need to put it in quotes?

_VFP.Setvar("m.cTmp","Fabio")

I see cTmp in the debugger, but

*fails
?m.cTmp
*without m. it works
_VFP.Setvar("cTmp","Fabio")

Thanks
G