...

 Unfortunately, it does not work in my usual use case: as an alias.

Example: use ccli where=evaluate("ccli") && Nope ? where.clcode

Well, in that case you should be using an alias:

use ccli alias TheTable

? TheTable.clcode

Well, I don't understand this at all.

"Use" is a VFP command that only opens a table. The following works fine for me:

CLOSE TABLES ALL

ccli = "C:\Some Path To\SomeTable.dbf"

USE (ccli) && table is now open

EVALUATE() applies when the parameter you feed it is the name of an object or a variable that stores the name of another variable.

You can do:

var1 = 3 var2 = "var1"

? EVALUATE(var2) && 3

And you can do:

myarray = "aList"

oMyObj.AddProperty(myarray)

? ALEN(oMyObj.&myarray.,1) && 1

But if you want to do this:

mytable = "foo" myfield = "bar"

? mytable.myfield

Then you need to do:

? &mytable..&myfield

A [table].[field] reference is not an object reference and can't be treated like one. It's a thing unto itself.

Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org