>>What is the Micro$oft preferred method of sending
>>suggestions these days? There used to be a "wishlist"
>>address, but I can't seem to remember it or be able to
>>find any reference to it in on the MSDN site.
>>
>> ...kt
>
>You can post it here and I'll make sure it gets to the VFP development team.

Thanks Craig.

I have four suggestions.  If I'm being redundant or even repeating
something over and over again, my appologies  :-)

1) a STATIC declaration which would be similar to the C construct 
allowing a variable's value to persist between execution iterations, 
but allow the variable to be scoped as well.  Such a declaration 
might also allow scoping so that one could have a LOCAL STATIC or 
a PRIVATE STATIC variable (obviously a PUBLIC STATIC wouldn't make much 
sense).  STATIC by itself could default to either (as you choose).

2) The ability to assign an initial value in a declaration.  
e.g:
LOCAL lnCounter = 0
PRIVATE STATIC lcOutString = ""

3) An OPTION EXPLICIT, similar to VB.  I think this would be invaluable 
in aiding debugging and helping to create more stable applications.  
Making it an option wouold allow compatibility with existing code bases 
as well as enforcing shop standards where pre-declaration is required.  

4) Finally, VFP now initializes empty parameters to .F.  This makes 
checking for non-passed parameters a little more difficult than it 
could be.  Offering something like:
SET NULLPARM TO
	-or-
SET EMPTYPARM TO
Would allow the developer to devine the value passed in such a case.  
One could use:
SET NULLPARM TO .NULL.
	-or-
SET EMPTYPARM TO CHR(255)

Then in code one could say:

SET EMPTYPARM TO .NULL.

? Hello( .T., "Keith")

REPLACE Greeting WITH Hello( .T.,,{06/01/1999})

THIS.txtSalutation.Value = Hello( "Keith")


FUNCTION World( vlPrintName, vcName, vdToday)

IF ISNULL( vcName) OR VARTYPE( vcName) <> "C"
	vcName = "whatever your name is"
ENDIF

IF ISNULL( vlPrintName) OR VARTYPE( vlPrintName) <> "L"
	vlPrintName = .F.

ENDIF

IF ISNULL( vdToday) OR VarType( vdDate) <> "D"
	llDateEntered = .T.
	vdToday = DATE()
ELSE
	llDateEntered = .F.
ENDIF
	
lcRetVal = "Hello "
IF vlPrintName
	lcRetVal = lcRetVal + ", " + vcPrintName + "."
ENDIF

IF llDateEntered
	lcRetVal = lcRetVal + " The date you entered was " ;
		+ DTOS( vdToday)
ENDIF

RETURN lcRetVal

An admittedly contrived example, but you get the point.  Named parameters 
would be nice too, but I suspect that it would add a bit of overhead to 
the parsing routines that would, I'm sure not be welcomed in the VFP 
community  :-)

	...kt