>>>Looks like I've been wasting odd lines of code for years then.
>>>
>>>I could have *sworn* I've used that lazy way out in the odd noddy code I've written in the past. Let me see now ... was it in PLM/86?
>>>
>>>Mind you, for readability, I'd still rather see something more meaningful, like:
>>>
>>>lnNumFiles = ALEN(laFiles,1)
>>>
>>>For I = 1 to lnNumFiles ...
>>
>>I do that, but not for readability. I do it because each time I don't, there comes a case when I need that value elsewhere in the code, and I don't want to call alen() multiple times.
>
>Why ?

Because I usually need the array's size at the time - it's often a result of some VFP function which creates an array, so I want to keep information on how many rows were found. The code may later redimension the array, and alen() would give a different result. In that case, I prefer having another variable to hold the new array size, so I know which is which without misreading the code.

Speed is a minor issue here - alen() is only a few milliseconds slower than retrieving a value of a variable, so calling it again doesn't cost much at all. Still, it's an old habit of mine - if it's a function, don't call it twice if you don't have to.