E. C.,

One way to think about these two operations is to adjust the names you are using. Refer to the &Varname expansion as Macro EXPANSION. That is the operation takes the content of a varaible and expands it as if the content was the code on the line where the &var appears.

The other operation is referred to as Name EXPRESSIONS and it is used where ever VFP is expecting the name of something (ie a file, a field, etc..). The surrounding of the variable with parens allows you to use an expression instead of the actual name in your code.

A third operation that fits in here is the EVALUATE() function, which returns the value of an expression by evaluating the expression. For example;

lcVar = "1 + 2"
?Evaluate(lcVar) && returns 3

I hope this is usefull.