I want to point out that your code works in both cases because field name lenght is limited to 10 characters not 8. It'll generate an error in VFP7 and later if any cursor field name is longer than 10 characters because the field name could be truncated as result of the ALTER TABLE command.

>I've found an issue in ALTER TABLE command, it doesn't work adding a field with more than 8 chars of long in VFP cursor.
>
>

>CREATE CURSOR Temp (iid int)
>lcField = "cShort"
>**** This Works *******
>ALTER TABLE Temp ADD COLUMN (lcField) int
>lcLongField = "cLongField"
>**** This doesn't work ********
>ALTER TABLE Temp ADD COLUMN (lcLongField) int
>

>
>What can I do? Any work arround?, I've looking for in the Help, but doesn't say anything about this issue.