I wrote about this in FoxPro Advisor July 1997.

>in VFP's Help We can find :
>"If you use the LOCATE command without the FOR expression, Visual FoxPro
>positions the record pointer at the first logical record. This is faster
>than using GO TOP when a filter is in use or when DELETED is ON."
>
>For my curiosity, I wanted to know how much faster LOCATE is, but I got the opposite !
>Is the information provided by MS wrong , or did I make the test incorectly ???
>
>TEST 1
>

SET DELETED ON
>SET ORDER TO 1

>
>USING LOCATE : 42.76 SECONDS
>USING GOTOP : 22.51 SECONDS
>
>
>TEST 2
>

SET DELETED ON
>SET ORDER TO

>
>USING LOCATE : 30.03 SECONDS
>USING GOTOP : 7.89 SECONDS
>
>
>TEST 3
>

SET DELETED OFF
>SET ORDER TO 1

>
>USING LOCATE : 26.15 SECONDS
>USING GOTOP : 22.53 SECONDS
>
>
>TEST 4
>

SET DELETED OFF
>SET ORDER TO

>
>USING LOCATE : 13.48 SECONDS
>USING GOTOP : 7.82 SECONDS
>
>
>
>
>The code I run is :
>

>CLOSE ALL
>CLEAR ALL
>CLEAR EVENTS
>SET DELETED OFF && ON
>
>USE myTable
>SET ORDER TO 1
>nSecs = SECONDS()
>FOR n = 1 TO 10000000
>   GO BOTTOM
>   GO TOP
>NEXT
>MESSAGEBOX(TRANSFORM(SECONDS() - nSecs ) +  " Seconds")
>

>
>I just alternate SET DELETED and SET ORDER.
>
>Regards
>
>Cesar