> >>Greg,
> >>
> >>Sorry to disappoint you, but in your case you should have been using name expression instead.
> >>
> >>E.g.
> >>
> >>replace (lcFiledName) with lcValue in (lcAlias) && this is much better and safer syntax
> >
> >Actually this is very unsafe syntax. It should be:
> >
> replace (m.lcFieldName) with m.lcValue in (m.lcAlias) && this is much better and safer syntax
> >to be safe. However, majority use the unsafe way. My .02 cents.
> >
> >Cetin
>
> Great point, Cetin. I used to always use m. notation, but later had to drop this habit to adhere to other programmers' style.

I generally use m. whenever there can be an ambiguity of whether or not it's a variable or field name. In cases where it can only be a variable I don't use the prefix. For example:

i = m.i + 1

I had adopted this convention from having to deal with one of the quirks of QuickSilver (a dBASE compiler) back in the DOS days. Had I used the "m." prefix on the left-hand-side of the assignment statement, it would've created a variable with "m." as part of the name -- meaning that I'd have to use "m.m.i" to access the contents of that variable.

Ugh... just had nasty flashback of dealing with dBASE III+ code using "pseudoarrays" based around macro expansions... (combined with 10-character limit on identifiers and maximum number of variables it could get ugly. At least back in those days applications were relatively simple)