Actually, VFP follows the ANSI SQL-92 standard here which means you can use

SELECT ;
    tally.manstart - tally.manend tmansold ;
    ...

Notice that you can choose to use AS or just plain follow the expression with it's desired name in the result cursor.

I really thought your AT was a typo. There is no AT in SQL-92.

---

>You use AS when you want to name the column in the resulting cursor. If you don't care what the name of the column is FoxPro will name the column for you something like "Expression1".
>
>>Should I use AS all the time instead?

>>>The following code demonstrates this in full:
>>>

create cursor tally (manstart Y, manend Y)
>>>insert into tally values($500, 200)
>>>insert into tally values($1500, 800)
>>>SELECT ;
>>>   tally.manstart - tally.manend AS tmansold ;
>>>   FROM tally ;
>>>   INTO CURSOR curslp
>>>brow