>If the addition is not as instrumental as it would have been in FP 2.x - which was last released 6 years ago - why is it good stuff? i.e., why is it so important to have consistiency amongst Xbase commands?

Not everyone uses those commands, but for those who do the additions are a blessing. Not everyone uses MessageBox() either (many use their own MessageBox handler), but they've updated that.

>FWIW, I am not trying to pick a fight here.

After you countered your counter-counter, I realized that your self conflict is something I didn't want to jump into the middle of ;-)

>Rather, I am trying to encourage a discussion of what these new "features" are and what they really mean...

I understand your points completely, and I think alot of people grasped the meaning of my comment, but I'm glad you took the time to clarify that. But we've talked about this before, people should be able to write apps how they want, wether John Petersen or Microsoft is convienced that the other way is the best way, and since we're assuming the VFP team has the time to make these sort of changes (IOW, waiting for VB to move its ass along) why not accomodate those other people.