>>In general, the cost of EVAL() is high in loop/repetition conditions; the macro-expansion is performed once for the statement as a whole, and not executed against each iteration.
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>Nope. It's executed per iteration. But you have to know when VFP evaluates a line. A loop command like FOR is only evaluated once. Changing the TO variable doesn't affect the number of loops. A SCAN FOR condition is also only evaluated once, if it's optimizable, otherwise it's evaluated for each record.
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I think that we're saying the same thing - the command line is macro-expanded, then executed. If the condition were based on an EVAL(), the EVAL() would take place per iteration, when the condition was tested; since the condition has already been macro-expanded before the line is executed and the condition to evaluate is defined, the cost of macro expansion is incurred once.