There's a new function called TextMerge() in VFP7, that works like this. You put in a string and it returns it back.

?TEXTMERGE('Test1') && Returns "Test1"

BUT WAIT! It gets better :-)

It also does TextMerge()s, surprisingly, for example:

?TEXTMERGE('Test1 <<_screen.Caption>>') && Returns "Test1 Microsoft Visual FoxPro"

There is another parameter that lets you recurse through until no more merges need to be done. For example, where:

lcCaption = '<<_screen.caption>>'
?TEXTMERGE('Test1 <>')

would return "Test1 <<_screen.Caption>>", this:

?TEXTMERGE('Test1 <>',.t.)

return "Test1 Microsoft VisualFoxPro", and of course:

lcCaption = '<>'
?TEXTMERGE("Test1 <>", .T.)

Would hose the entire app. Also, the 3rd and 4th parameters let you specify the beginning and ending delimiters for the merge, but I think it only lets you specify two characters for each tag, no more no less.

There's also this blip in the help: "This function ignores all non-COM object references, including references to Visual FoxPro objects." whici I can't figure out what its getting at. I've used COM properties and non-COM properties in TextMerge() and they both work fine.