>>>And you could probably expand an object reference via &objectname..&propertyname, but again, why, when name expansion is faster and isn't delimiter-sensitive?
>>
>>Well, I didn't say it was fast, just that it was possible. But there are instances where the syntax doesn't call for a name, and so a name expression isn't an option, in which case macro expansion is useful and it's nice to know how to do it.
>
>If that's the case, then EVAL() is an option.

Sure. In the example I originally gave (to display the contents of a field when the table name and field name are variables) one could write

?eval(eval('lcTableName') + '.' + eval('lcFieldName'))

instead of

?&lcTableName..&lcFieldName.

>There are relatively few times where macro expansion is desirtable, and this particular case, it's simply the wrong thing to use.

I think we both agree that a name expression is a better choice in this particular case. Again, I wasn't trying to defend the use of macro expansion so much as I was simply saying that it is syntactically possible to reference a table.fieldname that way.

BTW, Ed, there are a few people whose posts I always read here on UT, and yours are among them. Thanks for the many and various insights along the way.