>Erik,
>
>>>What I'm trying to say is, without macro substitution you'll loose one of the most powerfull and valuable VFP features (maybe because many other languages don't have this).
>>
>>It's only valuable now because we're trapped into using it. It's a crutch that we're forced to use because we're otherwise crippled. Not to mention, its very presence encourages bad and unreadable code.
>
>Maybe you should read the message written by Rick. he explains (in a better way than I could) why macrosubstitution is so important...
>

I saw a decent argument made for EVAL(), which I agree is a very nice feature. I don't know enough about the internal workings of macros and EVAL() to know how closely the two are tied, but I would kick and scream a lot louder if you asked me to give up EVAL.

>One more question. What do you think of the importance of the COMPILE command ?

To be honest, I think it's a really cool feature, but I have yet to use it in production. I can see how it might be very important to the author of a programming tool (like WWWC) or any other application that might need to generate code on the fly.

I bet that if you did a survey, you would find the percentage of VFP users who have used this feature is very low, and of those, a high percentage are using it for the wrong reasons or because of bad design.