Many Visual FoxPro commands and functions require that you supply a name. Although a name cannot be a variable or an array element, you can create a name expression that substitutes the value of a Character variable or array element as the name.
When you store the name to the variable or array element, you can substitute the name into a command or function by enclosing the variable in parentheses. To use a list of names, separate the names with commas. A name is not an expression, a variable or array element, or a field. A name should not be surrounded by quotation marks. Otherwise, names follow the Visual FoxPro naming rules described in the section Creating Visual FoxPro Names.
For example, the REPLACE command requires a field name. You can store a field name to a variable and use a name expression in REPLACE where the field name occurs:
STORE 'city' TO cVarCity
REPLACE (cVarCity) WITH 'Paris'
Visual FoxPro stores the field name city
to the variable cVarCity
, then stores the value "Paris" in the field, city
, which is the value of the name expression cVarCity
.