What a community! I post a message at 03:06pm and you reply by 03:18pm! Just got back in town today and appreciate your response. I guess this leads to another question since LOCAL variables are the safest way to go. Do most developers define all the variables at the beginning of a routine, or declare them local as they are defined? Also, is there a way to tell VFP to REQUIRE variable declarations? I tend to define variables and names as I go through the programming process and don't know if I'll always remember to add the local declarations each time I create a new variable. But if VFP could generate an error upon using an undeclared variable I'd catch that (hopefully) the first or second time I ran the routine.

Thanks again for your response.

- Dean