>>>>>I have an application that needs a compound index built. The fields are all string fields, but the user would like the second field to be in descending order. Is there a good way to do this in VFP?
>>>>>
>>>>>TIA
>>>>
>>>>The best of the simples way is to use SYS(15), but it don't support 0h0
>>>>

>>>>INDEX ON FIELD1+sys(15,0HFFFEFD.....,field2) tag ...
>>>>

>>>
>>>The problem with the SYS command is the phrase "Kept for Backward compatiblity" in the help file. This makes me wonder if the command will still be around from version to version and supported. Thanks for the response.
>>
>>1. This is a false problem on the last version.
>>2. It works. "Kept for Backward compatiblity" it doesn't have some meaning for me.
>
>Sys(15) is there since FoxPlus, and the only reason it's marked as "backward compatible" is that chrtran() is more flexible and yet can do the same thing. I don't see sys(15) ever going away, specially when that was the recommended way to get national collating sequences in the early versions. There was european.mem file distributed with Fox, FP and VFP until some version, which contained a variable to be used with sys(15) to achieve collating sequence General. My bet is it stays.

sure, but a 18x faster
it is not to throw in the garbage,
and for an index key ....

CLEAR
s0=0h
s1=0H
FOR k=1 TO 254
	s0=m.s0+CHR(k)
	s1=m.s1+CHR(K+1) && shift 1 up
next

* burn
FOR K=1 TO 10000000
NEXT

s=REPLICATE(m.s0,10000)

t1=SECONDS()
		x1=SYS(15,m.s1,m.s)
? "sys",SECONDS()-t1

t1=SECONDS()
	x2=CHRTRAN(m.s,m.s0,m.s1)
? "chrtran",SECONDS()-t1

* raplay
t1=SECONDS()
		x1=SYS(15,m.s1,m.s)
? "sys",SECONDS()-t1

t1=SECONDS()
	x2=CHRTRAN(m.s,m.s0,m.s1)
? "chrtran",SECONDS()-t1

? "equal",x1==x2