>>Thanks for clarification - it was me then who didn't know that on time :).
>>
>>Now I've looked at the error 1115 - Invalid operation for the cursor (if that was what he got), and it says "An attempt was made to use the PACK command on a cursor.", which can still be a wrong error... or maybe not, if Alter Table does a PACK behind the scenes. Does it? Or did it do so in some versions? It shouldn't, but it does perform similarly to PACK (create a new table, append, kill the old), the difference being that it appends deleted records as well, and preserves their deleted() status.
>>
>>So I wonder what could have caused 1115 and I can't find any other error with similar text.
>
>The error 1115 description never got updated. Since VFP7 ALTER TABLE generates that error when cursor has long field names. In VFP6 and earlier the field names were silently truncated to 10 characters.

Ah - now the story is complete. It's one of those that I never manage to memorize, because I got the error only once or twice and then knew how to avoid it. Then when I hear about the error again, I can't remember what was causing it because I haven't seen it in years, and I also don't keep any private error table where such info could be stored. Should have done that... sort of late now.

Some would say that now would be the right time - no new errors should appear, no new doc errors either, no new bugs... so such a table may have more than temporary value.