>>In any project you'll have to explain/develop conventions.Forcing to use mdot is just as well an example of that. For fieldnames, using the three letter prefix has NOT been motivated by the var/field conflicts, but rather with the bonus that each fieldname is unique in your database. Therefore if you encounter a fieldname anywhere in SQL statements and elsewhere in your code, you know immediately where it orginates from. In SQL it will reduce the number of times to prefix fields with an alias to make clear from which table the field comes from ANYWHERE in your code.
>
>Of course, the big disadvantage of your naming convention is that you're giving up 4 (not 3) of the 10 characters you have to name a field, meaning that you have to find a meaningful description of the field in just 6 characters.
>
>
>On the readability question, when I finally bit the bullet (after being bitten too many times) and switched to using mdot, it took only a few hours before it became second nature and easily readable. It wasn't a whole lot different than adapting to IntelliSense. I've heard people say they turn off IntelliSense because it gets in their way, but I can help believing that for most of them, a few hours working with it on would solve that problem.
>
>Tamar

Hi Tamar,
IMHO using such a convention the issue is much more serious than giving up a few letters (and weren't they complaining 2 characters m. rendering readability?). When you use 3-4 chars (unnecessary) prefix you make the fieldnames unique within a database. That sounds to be a good thing? Probably not. We are not all using the native VFP tables nor VFP only tools. Within VFP it sounds be good just because (oh well for what?). In other databases and their tools, the case is different. Some tools simply utilize the fact that same named fields are the best candidates for join keys. Having unique names:

select * from tableA join tableB ...

you wouldn't bother about fieldnames? Right, maybe, but afterall "select *" is not a recommended syntax anyway.

Hard to understand why would I ever want to name a field ord_OrderDate (maybe helping to prevent cus_OrderDate?) Ugly and readable, go figure. They surely help unnecessarily typing 3-4 more letters per fieldname.