>I've always thought that a variable created in a method is by default LOCAL and cannot be accessed by higher or lower methods, that is (in my mind) that it cannot be changed by another lower / higher method. That's what I read in the Help.
>

Nope - by default, VFP creates variables not explicitly declared as PRIVATE.

>And that's true most of the time, when you create a simple variable in a method. But it's false when your method calls another method in which you create a local variable with the same name.
>

If you'd explicitly declared the variable as LOCAL, it would have been local and this side-effect would not have occurred. If you'd declared it as LOCAL in the second method, Test2, it would've used the local rather than the PRIVATE inherited from above.