>> The risk is in naming variables that may conflict with field names, and your program processing the wrong values. Do
>
>That never happened to me. Just lucky I guess.
>Now I'm curious.
>Is it a risk in this case?
>

>name = "joe"
>If name = customer.name
>   exit    
>endif
>

In the given example, if there is a field called "name" in the current workarea and its value matches customer.name, then the EXIT will be performed, even if the value contained in customer.name does not match "joe".
and let's not forget also that the expression "a = b" may not return the same result as "b = a" if SET EXACT is OFF

set exact off
? "joe smith" = "joe"
? "joe" = "joe smith"