>Hi Hilmar. Thanks but I am not asking if it is faster or not. The question has a definitive answer as to whether these lookups are performed or not. Someone knows for sure whether this is the case or not.
Well, it seems logical that if "m." is not specified, VFP requires additional processing to (a) first determine whether a field exists, and (b) once it determines that no field exists, look up in the variable table, to see if a variable by that name exists.
Part (b) has to be done in any case. Part (a) might be quite fast, assuming VFP internally keeps an indexed list of fields for each work area.
But still, if you don't tell VFP that it is a variable, I see no way for VFP to avoid this part.
Even within a loop: conditions, like which alias is selected, can change from one iteration to the next.
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