Hi Martin:)

>The problem with all this is that it breaks the way VFP uses work alias, aliases, selected tags, etc.

Well we could say the same thing about many of the language enhancements in the past. VFP has many commands that do roughly the same thing.

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>Our solution to avoid this have being using our custom "use" function (maybe like yours). We didn't have performance penalties, and it cares about a lot of things on our framework too.

Yes I see your point about it being a handy place to leave such code but of course your custom 'use' function will still work the same.

However it has been the history of Fox that whenever the developers see a function that is used in every application that they make that function part of the language.

I think doing this over the years has made VFP the powerful tool it is today.


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>>Just another thought on this (to try and keep the thread going).
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>>Perhaps it could be additional parameter on the SELECT command so that it is opened if it is not already open ie.
>>
>>SELECT customer OPEN
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>>Of course big drawback with this is it will not work if you want an alias different from your table name or if you are already using a alias different from your table name.
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>>>One of the most common things I find myself doing is checking if a table is open before I use it. If it is open I just want to select it not open it.
>>>
>>>ie I want to open table 'Customers' but since it may already be open I have to use some function or other to check if it is already open first.
>>>
>>>Sometimes I will just use the USED() command to check first.
>>>
>>>Othertimes I might use my USETABLE() function to open it.
>>>
>>>By now I was hoping that there would be some sort of built in function to do this, maybe its in there already somewhere and I have just missed it.
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>>>I am not sure what form of syntax this should take..I guess most of us are familiar with USETABLE() but I notice OPEN() is also going free.
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>>>An additional parameter on the USE command could also be considerd (might start getting over burdened here though).
>>>
>>>Is it now too late to get suggestions into VFP7