> I'm just wondering who comes up with this stuff.
>

 Those who use the language to it's most interpretable form. I have seen 
general BASIC programming instructors focus on the use of
non-cryptic, non-abbreviated variables, instead of compact code. Afterall, the 
pcode generated is the same for THE.CUSTOMER.CITY as
it is for CCITY or CUST_CITY. Which can you comprehend the quickest at a 
glance? You can also parse your own code, if you have a
delimited variable structure that is consistent throughout the entire project. 
All good things, unless you're main focus is keeping
the code short and cryptic. I have to agree, though, that "THE" is not really a 
useful variable keyword. It does help with
programmatic variable identification, though. To each his own.

> Also, was there ever any lack of faith in the READ statement when assigning
> the variable REC. I'm now seeing some of this:
>
> REC="" ; READ REC FROM FILE, ID ELSE REC=""
>

 I use the "else null" clause religiously under D3. I have seen numerous 
accounts of read failures not resetting the target
variable. The program chugs along happily with data from a previous read and it 
eventually blows up for a seemingly unknown reason.
The extra null assignment is overkill, unless it exists once at the start of 
the program to prevent "variable not assigned" run-time
notices.

Glen
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