>You speak very authoritatively. Can I assume that you are a member of the VFP Design or Management team?

Ken can speak for himself, but he does do contract work with Microsoft. He wrote the Class Browser, e.g.

>I must also say that this is, to say the least, an unusual situation for any computer 'language' that I have come across - that, BY DESIGN, a command may cause an Exception.

It isn't _that_ unusual. Take the / operator, for example... :)

>Truly, this situation should not be allowed to stand, as it will be far too tempting for the VFP (and other) language 'designeers' to make this regular practise.

I tend to agree with you, though: The design, given current language usage, is flawed.