>I think I have hit it - the application crapped out so badly that I couldn't even get any information as to the current size of the variable - I am going to implement a max size and then truncate according to some kind of FIFO rule, but I was hoping to see how far I could go. BTW, it is not yet confirmed that the size of the variable is the cause of the problem. Once I implement the max size I can repeat the test.
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Gerry,

The maximum size for a character memory variable in VFP is 2GB, yes "G" B, of course the memory in your machine will probably fill up before you hit the VFP limit. So whatever is happening in your app it is not exceeding the VFP variable size.