>>>What is the limit of CASE in a DO CASE ?
>>
>>I don't think there is one.
>>
>>But for practical reasons, please consider the following example:
>>
>>

>>do case
>>case x = 1
>>  ...
>>case x = 2
>>  ...
>>case x = 3
>>  ...
>>...
>>case x = 500
>>  ...
>>endcase
>>

>>
>>If "x" happens to be equal to 500, Visual FoxPro must analize all 500 cases, before carrying out the desired action. If this happens often, i.e., in a tight loop, performance will be bad. It might be much more efficient to split it, for example, as follows:
>>
>>

>>do case
>>case x <= 100
>>  do case
>>  case x <= 10
>>    case x = 1
>>      ...
>>    case x = 2
>>      ...
>>  case x <= 20
>>    case x = 11
>>      ...
>>    case x = 12
>>      ...
>>case x <= 200
>>...
>>

>>
>>Or something similar. Much less CASEs to be analyzed, for any given number.
>
>Good idea Hilmar. I was taught to place the CASE statements most likely to occur first. That is sometimes easy and worthwhile and at othertimes... :)

Oh, right, that's another way to make the CASE more efficient.

But usually, I never got to more than 5-10 CASEs or so, so I don't think this was a major issue for me.

Another consideration: If you really need, say, 500 CASEs, it might be worth-while to analyze the problem, and see if there isn't a more generic approach, that can be fit into much less CASEs. IOW, if there really are (say) 500 CASEs, there may be a lot of duplicate code.