Hi Aleksey,

>This looks like a bug, VFP fails to match index expression because its byte code contains "possibly passed by ref" tag for each argument passed to UDF. If you enclose arguments in parenthesis in the index expression, the tag will not be included and existing index will be used.

thanks for looking into it and showing me a way out - now on to rewriting (at least one more time<g>).

Thanks again

thomas