>SNIP
>
>>Why do that when it is not necessary, but ignore mdot when it certainly can be necessary?
>
>If you find yourself that it is necessary, it already is an indication there is something wrong. Column names should not conflict variable names in the first place. Granted, there are situations where this is out of your control, but in general your naming conventions should avoid this at all cost.
>
>To answer your question directly. For me it affects readability. As like Lutz, I hate it passionately.

I run into decades old code that mixes GATHER and SELECT SQL. Used BeautifyX against it. Applauded myself it was a short git rest -- hard xx.vc2 and foxbin2prg to get rid of the result .... SELECT m.thisthing AS m.thatthing FROM m.otherthing. OMIPU!

The problem with a table with many fields / many tables is, VFP will first run against those, then against the list of variables. So for access mdot makes sense. But for assign a value or accessing something that simple could not be a field like a method or array there it does not much sense to use it.