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>>It depends on the # of records returned by a query. A filtered cursor is a table opened similar to USE AGAIN and SET FILTER applied to it. With many records returned, SET FILTER will be faster becuse records don't have to be written to the result cursor.
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>If I may ask you a follow up question, please.
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>If I wanted to simply know how many records in a table matching some WHERE clause, and I want it as fast as possible (and then close the table), and I don't know how many records are in the resulting query (could be 1 or could be 1000 but probably not more than 1000), would your answer, "it depends" still apply?

If you just want the number, you can either SELECT COUNT(*) where MyCondition if you're using non-buffered table and VFP version < than 9, you can use it also in VFP9 for buffered data if you put WITH BUFFERING into the SQL and you should use COUNT FOR ... if you're using VFP < than 9 and buffered data.