Just a head's up that latest VFPA introduces a new SYS(9062) function that alters VFP behavior wrt mdot.

From http://baiyujia.com/vfpdocuments/f_vfp9fix180.asp :

SYS(9062 [, 0 | 1 | 2])

Parameters
0
For the variable name without mdot, vfp will not check the field name, it will check the variable name only.
1
For the variable name without mdot, vfp will check the field name first, if there is no the field name in the current work area,
vfp will check the variable name. 1 is the startup default for Visual FoxPro Advanced.
2
For the variable name without mdot, vfp will check the variable name first, if there is no the variable name, vfp will check
the field name in the current work area.

More info at the link. For people who are 100% sure of variable names versus field names and/or who use non-ambiguous code/alias prefixes, parameter 0 or 2 could provide a significant performance boost.