>> What the compiler and interpreter thinks is irrelevant to me, I know.
>Perhaps I am misunderstanding your statement there, but I would think that what the compiler/interpreter thinks *IS* relevant.

Not really for VFP as the compiler only compiles to p-code and does not really check whether a name is a field or variable if mdot is omitted. The interpreter does the final checking.
For me this is irrelevant because I know what it is because I avoid the conflict between variables and fieldnames