Sergey-

>>>>...and, to round it all out, there are the parameters indicated within parentheses after the name on a FUNCTION statement. These are implicitly LOCAL too,although I couldn't find this documented in the (VFP7) Help for "FUNCTION Command".
>>
>>The help for FUNCTION shows the alternate form (using parens). So not sure what Jim meant by that. But, hacker's covers this.
>
>He knows to much :)

I guess that you mean he knows that parameters passed in like that are local (LPARAMETERS) and not PRIVATE (PARAMETERS).

> Isn't this part of the help confusing, at least?

This is why we need each other. I venture no language is documented, in the product manual, 100%. What would all the frustrated authors have to write about?

>>It is by convention that we use FUNCTION for routines that return values.
>>
>What about people who're new to VFP but know other languages?

They'd have just learned something.