>>>>>>... should have the result that myAlias is in use or we have a major error - nothing else. I.e. the function should never be called if myalias is already open. Anything that would break these rules would be voted out by about 99% majority of programmers. Don't change the foundation rules, period.
>>>>>
>>>>>Hi Dragan.
>>>>>
>>>>>Lucky with the way boring old VFP is working. It depends on it's left to right working style. Other languages do other things. The working order could be partial unpredictable because of what the compile means to optimize.
>>>>>
>>>>>Again. We all do things like that (me too). But we should remember on such occasions that it is bad style - and why.
>>>>
>>>>Bad style? Because someone may decide that a few milliseconds of run time are worth more than a few hours of programmers' time? Well that decision would be worse than bad style, in whichever compiler it was made.
>>>
>>>Thats just the question what the programmer gets paid for. :)
>>
>>Fixing others' mistakes? Sometimes even unpaid...
>
>TANSTAAFL

But I wasn't asking for a thing which is similar or almost identical (as in "thing such as") to a free lunch. Nor were the users who got unpaid work done.

Come to think of it, that mysterious free lunch must be an unique phenomenon in this universe. Nothing is said about its existence, only about this thing which is "such as" it. Hmmm... mystery indeed. Why the circumspect language?