Yep, it's free to setup any variable except character type variables:

Note (within help on DISPLAY):
The number of bytes used represents memory used by character type variables. Character type variables are the only type of variables that require additional memory beyond that allocated by the variable count specified with the MVCOUNT configuration item.

So as MVCOUNT defaults to 16384, vfp will always allocate memory for 16384 variable structures, which includes the memory for their value, except the additional memory it will need for character type vars, if I interpret that correctly.

Bye, Olaf.