<snip>
>2. Whether you use naming conventions or not, VFP by design considers all variables that are not prefixed with Mdot as ambiguous references that must be resolved at runtime. It has to perform a lookup in the list of fields in the current workarea for every variable that is not prefixed with Mdot. Unless I am not understanding how VFP internally handles this ambiguity, using Mdot immediately identifies it as a variable and effectively short circuits the resolution process, bypassing the field list altogether. That should provide a performance boost, especially when many variables are referenced and the current workarea has many fields. An added benefit is that it eliminates any potential future bug should someone ever add a field with the same name.


Hi Elmer,

So if I have a file with 10 fields and 100 records and I need to scan through this file and inside my loop I reference 10 variables then VFP will need to lookup and resolve 10 vars x 10 fields x 100 recs = 10,000 field/variable references? Is that your understanding?