Hi Mike,

Interesting idea, but I think only partially possible here. The udf's are not very complex and nearly always either working on a single string or returning info about that string. Removing the overhead of function calling IS tempting. Concatenating the pure expressions via snippet engine should should give a boost. I partially use a similar approach with properties (giving me the benefit of inheritance and fast inspection via property sheet) and a query expressoin rule table, but your recursive approach is definitely at a higher level. While I believe some of the transformations are at least easier to code as udf: removing double letters for instance, I will at least the test of manually flattening the with only expressions into one big expression simulating the performance gains. Still - I don't see the need of the optimizing behavior vfp shows.

thx for the nudge

thomas