Thanx Martin for your reply
but:

>Hi Francesko,
>

>select lastname,firstname from mytable where ltrim(rtrim(lastname))||+ltrim(rtrim(firstname)>='SMITH'+'JOHN'
>
this statement does not work

>* or
>
>select lastname,firstname from mytable where lastname like 'SMITH%' AND firstname LIKE 'JOHN%'
>
this shows correctly the lastname but no name less than 'JOHN': no 'ALBERT' in the list!
>

>
>MartinJ
>
>>Hi John,
>>ask you help about a select. I need to populate a grid with first name and last name from 'mytable'. i.e. from 'SMITH' 'JOHN' to 'TUTTIFRUTTI' 'ALBERT' but i want to avoid 'SMITH' 'ALBERT'. In Foxpro the statement should be: select lastname,firstname from mytable where lastname+firstname>='SMITH'+'JOHN' (avoiding for semplicity the field space lenght) order by lastname,firstname. This does not work in Oracle. Have you some idea to make it work?
>>Thanx