JimB,

Terrific list. Just some comments.

>Here's the beginning of a list of commonly misused and abused features, functions, and commadns fo VFP.
>
>1: Inheritence has to be the single most commonly misused feature of all OO languages.

I'd agree, but add that the mis-use of polymorphism is right up there too.

>2: SET FILTER TO ... is very often used where another construct would do the job much more efficiently and with better performance.

Never, ever use it.

>3: & the macro expansion feature is too often used where it is either not necessary or ther is a bettter way to accomplish the same goal.

Absolutely! Leads to Q&D (Quick and Dirty) solutions that on the back end (maintenance and modification) are neither.

>4: Filtered indexes, are often used where they are not necessary. The same result can be obtained using SQL without the overhead of having an extra index tag around all the time.

See 2.

>5: UNIQUE indexes, not only are they misused but they could easily be totally removed from the product without any alteration in capabilities.

See 2 again.

>6: PUBLIC variables are often used in situations where they are totally not required.

Very rarely. I'd say 99.99% of VFP solutions don't need them.

>7: SET EXACT is often used to cover for not understanding the way strings are compared in xBase. This causes the loss of a lot of functionality that is inherent in the product in order to adapt to a lack of knowledge.
>
>8: == is often NOT used where it should be. See SET EXACT above.

Yes, and thank for you clarifying this for me in a thread earlier this year (same with SET EXACT).

>9: Reports used for producing a screen display of readable data. Reports are for printing on paper, forms are for showing on screen. Report Preview is for eyeballing before committing to paper.

Absolutely. Further, report design should be primarily aimed at readability, not looks.

>10: PACK is too often sued in situations where any benefit it porovides is far outweighted by the costs associated with it.

In general, agree. We've discussed this one too.:-)