>Hello All,
>Can someone show me the alternatives using public variable.
>I have used them extensively in my application but i hear it can get really dangerous.
>
>I have used public for the ff;
>
>1. At the main program (startup) to retrieve some table
>values into memory to be used throughout the program without opening the table all the time. I have read about \DEFINE. Can this work for retriving table values?

#DEFINE will only work for real constants. To read a value from a table or text-file, a global variable is really the only choice.

A variable declared in your main program is public for practical reasons (unless you declare it LOCAL), since it is available everywhere.

>
>2. Arrays deinitions - to prevent the erroy message 'array does not exist'

See help for EXTERNAL.

>PS. May i also know what the real dangers with public variables are?

The real danger is messy programming. If you have scores of public variables, and then forget one of them, you may overwrite the value somewhere else.