>When I began programming with FoxBase it was standard practice to refer to fields as tablename->fieldname and to just refer to variables as varname. When FoxPro came out the mdot notation for vars became standard and I think I missed a basic shift in philosophy.

FWIW, there was no change, except for the addition of the "." as a synonym for "->". Fields always had precedence, even in FoxBase.

Tamar