>DEFINE CLASS c1 AS CUSTOM
> o = CREATEOBJECT("c2")
>ENDDEFINE

Underscoring this thread is that it's very questionable practice to put *any* VFP expression in class constructor code, unless you really know what you're doing. Why? Because that code is "run" (such as it is) when the first object is created, and never again while that class definition is in memory.

To illustrate the point say you have a class defined as:

DEFINE CLASS Sample AS CUSTOM
  tTimeCreated = DATETIME()
ENDDEFINE

In this class the developer erroneously thinks *each object* will be stamped with its creation time, while in fact all objects will have the same value:

o1 = CREATEOBJECT("Sample")
DECLARE Sleep IN Win32API Integer
Sleep(1000)  && force a delay between object creation
o2 = CREATEOBJECT("Sample")
? IIF(o1.tTimeCreated <> o2.tTimeCreated, "Different", "Oops!")

I'm glad to see that at least VFP 9 prevents you from doing this with *objects*. In a code review, I would flag *any* use of an expression in constructor code for examination.

What you want is either containership:

DEFINE CLASS c1 AS CUSTOM
  ADD OBJECT o AS c2 

or you want an (non-container) object reference:

DEFINE CLASS c1 AS CUSTOM
  o = NULL
  FUNCTION INIT
    o = CREATEOBJECT("c2") 

-- Randy