>Hi all
>
>Here's an interesting problem I found in an application I inherited.
>
>I strongly advise against single letter aliases in SQL and in VFP from the perspective of readability and maintainability. Be especially careful with M as an alias in VFP SQL.
>
>create table tmpinvoices free (field1 c(10))
>local ltDatetime
>ltDatetime = datetime()
>select m.field1,m.ltDatetime as tdatetime from tmpinvoices m into cursor c_Result
>
>You will get an error that column ltDatetime is not found. OK. So drop the m. from ltDatetime, but now you are slowing your query - admittedly very little, but I don't like doing things half-fast. ;)
>
>I tried to add this to the mdot topic on the wiki, but my changes are not being saved.

Single letter aliases are OK. M is a special reserved "alias" for memory variables. Simply use another local alias for your table and m. for the memory variable.
Cetin