Walter,

The reason I gave a frame of reference to quantity of code was in reply to this part of Fabio's post:

>But write This without m. , not optimal programming is one.

>David, is useless that you insist, who you do not use m. you mistake.

It was soley to point out that I have never, ever needed to use m.this anywhere in all the code I've written.

>I understand that, however it is meant to give you a sign that your answer might be explained in a negative way. Not only by me, but other people also. What you do with it is entirely up to you.

Ok, then when you said you've written hundreds of thousands of lines of VFP, should the same people consider you to be tens times as arrogant or negative as me? *bg*

>I'm sure it is, and I don't doubt that. However I don't see the relevance of this statement. Quantity certainly is not a measument for quality, esspecially in this field. I know too may examples of people who have been programming all their lives but could not produce a decent piece of code.

It is a measure of just how obtuse the m.this construct is. I'd never even seen it in a message or in any code I've ever reviewed before Fabio's first posting of it.

>Well don't try to build a local view on such table, because VFP insist open that table by its native name.

If and when I ever run across a database that has table names with a totally undescriptive name this, I'd likely walk away from the project or recommend a complete rewrite of the system.

>And how about fields named THIS or THISFORM?

Field names this and thisform shouldn't ever give the VFP parser heartburn. Yet on the other hand a developer is always risking their code reliability and lifetime when they use reserved words in the wrong places.

>Let it be clear. I really don't want to be in a situation where I have to use m. in such cases. Where ever I can, I avoid the use of m. at all. However, I do recognize people use different naming conventions and programming styles, and I recognize you have to take controversial routes from time to time.

And to do so is at your own risk, and it's not so much VFP's problem that it'll let you shoot yourself in the foot if that's what you want/need to do.

>For example using a m. ?

Only as a very last resort. I'd USE it with a different alias as a starting point.