>>Hi Raul,
>>
>>To expand on Carlo's answer: &control..name
>>
>>The reason you need 2 periods: VFP has to know where to stop macro exapansion. So, the first period stops the exapansion and the second separates the object from the member.
>
> Hi John:
>
> Actually the issue was not with objects but with variables.
> var_value = 5
> v1 = 'var_'
> v2 = 'value'
> output = &v1.&v2
>
> Doing some speed tests the following is the best sollution (almost half the time to complete):
> var_value = 5
> v1 = 'var_'
> v2 = 'value'
> output = EVAL(v1 + v2)
>
> Of course those are generic examples and is not the way I'm appliying it.
> Since the speed of EVAL() is about twice the speed of using &, is there a way
> of doing the following using EVAL()?
>
> var_value = 5
> var_name = 'var_value'
> &var_name = 6 && var_value is now 6
>
> I don't see a way of using EVAL() to accomplish that, but I might be missing something.
>
>TIA

try:

var_name = 'var_value'
store 6 to (var_name)

var_value is now 6, and name resolution is tons faster than macro expansion.