David,

>It can't. If a line of code contains any & macros, that line is not parsed/compiled until runtime, because the actual string being substituted is not known until then.

You got that right. This seems to be what the compiler is behaving right NOW.

However, a compiler should be able to detect following error without doing a macro substitution.

SELECT &lcAlias..*,from &lcAlias INTO CURSOR curabc

I cannnot think of any possible value in the lcAlias that would make the above statement correct.
Could you?

Dawa