>>SET COLLATE TO coldcollate works because coldcollate is the name of a variable which contains a string argument that SET COLLATE TO accepts. I bet all of the following will work!
>>
>>collate = set("collate")
>
>This shouldn't work, because the Set Collate command requires a string; when the macro unpacks you get a word without quotes
>>SET COLLATE TO &collate
>...so this should work:
>>SET COLLATE to collate
>...because it really gets a string (string variable in this case). We could also
>SET COLLATE to (collate)
>...since this will yield a value of a string variable, which is a string expression.
>
>The whole, ahem. set of SET statements reminds me of a big house with lots of rooms which were added later, so they all have doors and light, but you find very different doorknobs, lightswitches and lights, whichever was available (fashionable) at the time they were added. One thing that always annoyed me in xBase is that you didn't need quotes around all of the strings - the alias names, filenames, etc. Now we're gone into another direction: you must put quotes around things which are actually variables or filenames, like when you're assigning a ControlSource property. It's as consistent as if politicians designed it... but I still like it (in general).

Your "adding on to the house analogy" is great! There have been many "rooms" added to FoxPro since it came out in 1989. But it has made quite a house!