>Fabio,
>It's a bug as agreed. Why would I ever reindex it. Assuming there might be a need, yes reindex kills the index but still you can give a kiss and bring it back to life in 2-3 lines of code.

Cetin,
How do you bring it back to life ?
With a new table, index and Append the source table !?
You can write these 2-3 lines ...

But PACK, too, kill the index ! Can you live without PACK ?

Next code close the door ( and open many ????? on the VFP data engine ):

	clear
	set ansi on
	set exact on
	set collate to 'machine'
	set optimize on

	create TABLE  CursorTest FREE;
		( 	j_ref		I ;
		)
	
	
*	create Cursor  CursorTest ;
		( 	j_ref		I ;
		)
	
	index on bintoc(j_ref) tag j_ref
	
	insert into CursorTest values(44 )
	insert into CursorTest values( 0 )
	insert into CursorTest values(44 )

	?'-------------------------------------'


	locate for (bintoc(j_ref)+' ' == bintoc(0)+' ')
	?'optimize locate 0 (TRUE)', found(), '  ERROR'

	locate for (bintoc(j_ref)+' ' == bintoc(0)+' ') NOOPTIMIZE
	?'no optimize locate 0 (TRUE)', found(), ' OK'

	local aa[1]
	aa[1] = 0

	select count(*) ;
		from CursorTest ;
		into array aa ;
		where (bintoc(j_ref)+' ' == bintoc(0))

	?'optimize count 0 (1):', aa[1], ' ERROR'

	set optimize off
	select count(*) ;
		from CursorTest ;
		into array aa ;
		where (bintoc(j_ref)+' ' == bintoc(0))
	set optimize on

	?'no optimize count 0 (1):', aa[1], aa[1], ' ERROR'


	locate for (bintoc(j_ref)+' ' == bintoc(44)+' ')
	?'optimize locate 44 (TRUE), recno 1:', found(), 'OK ', recno()

	insert into CursorTest  values( 0 )
	locate for (bintoc(j_ref)+' ' == bintoc(0)+' ')
	?'optimize locate 0 (TRUE), recno 2:', found(), recno(), 'ERROR'

>It seems more cumbersome to me to be carefull to add extra space.