Craig is correct. The first dot indicates the end of the expansion while the second dot is interpretted as an actual dot.

>Hi all,
>
>Hey everyone... We were having a discussion with a junior programmer about macro expansion and the topic of usung double dots came up. Actually discovered this quite by accident and I had to admit that while using double dots has been around for ages I couldn't remember all of the reasons and justifications for its implementation.
>
>For example:
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>Temporary cursor named "cResults" containing fields named "cXML1", "cXML2" & "cXML3".
>
>Well, I pointed out to Jeff that you could do something like this:
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>cDBF = alias() && cResults
>cField = "cXML" + alltrim(str(nLoop)) && 1, 2 & 3
>
>and then do this:
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>? &cDBF..&cField and you'd get the proper field.
>
>For the life of me I can't remember the reason we needed to use double dots but after talking to Craig Berntson he suggested that one might indicate the end of a macro expansion and the second dot was interpreted as the 'normal' dot used when referring to a table plus field.
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>This seems the most accurate but I was wondering if any of you old timers <g> might remember anything additional to this.
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>This also works for situations like "THISFORM.&cTextbox..value" which would also make sense, given the presumption above.
>
>Thoughts??
>
>Best,
>
>DD