What are the ground rules for using LOCALs and STATICs?

 LOCALs and STATICs must be the first statements in a function,
 except possibly for the PARAMETERS statement.  They may be
 declared with initial values (e.g. LOCAL a := 1), but STATICs may
 not be initialized with a value that is unknown to the compiler
 (e.g. STATIC b := myfunc()--where myfunc is the name of your
 user-defined function--is invalid).  The initialization is
 performed every time the function is called (in the case of
 LOCALs) or once at the beginning of the program (in the case of
 STATICs).

 If you want to use a file-wide STATIC variable to share information
 among functions within the same source module, that module must be
 compiled with the /n switch, and the STATIC declarations must
 precede the first FUNCTION or PROCEDURE.