>I'm like *really* confused about macro expansions and name expressions. I start with the following code:
>
>

>* Grab a couple tempfile names
>
>lcFOrange= SUBSTR(SYS(2015), 3, 10) && taken from VFP help examples
>lcFExpend =SUBSTR(SYS(2015), 3, 10) && temp table name
>lcFCommit =SUBSTR(SYS(2015), 3, 10) && temp table name
>lcFOutput =SUBSTR(SYS(2015), 3, 10) && temp output file
>
>SELECT whatever into table (lcFExpend)
>

>
>This works, fine, but the (lcFExpend) then isn't a "real" alias that can be used to do things like
>
>

>WHERE (lcFExpend).fieldname="myvalue"
>

There are several ways out. First, since its name is rather random, you may not like to use it - use the alias instead:


SELECT whatever into table (lcFExpend)
lcFExpAlias=alias()

select * from (lcFExpend) aex into ...

Within the later select command, the "aex" is the local alias, so your Where clause would look like this:

WHERE aex.fieldname="myvalue"

In any other case, you may either

select (lcFexpAlias)

or

use (lcFExpend) again in 0 alias FExpend

and refer to its fields with FExpend.fieldname wherever you need it.

Still, I'd recommend using cursors instead. They vanish when closed, altogether with their .fpt and .?dx files. With tables, you must first make sure they're closed, then

erase (lcFExpend+".*")