>>>>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.

On my test ALEN() is a few microseconds faster that retrieving a value of a variable.