>Naomi,

>*------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>* Procedure :  FieldNumInAlias
>* Purpose   :  This procedure will return the position of a field in a table
>*              if the field exists in the table, otherwise it will return a zero.
>*              if Alias is not available, it will return -1
>*
>* NOTE      :  This function could be made a little more efficient via the
>*              use of the FIELD function, however this function does triple
>*              duty by indicating
>*              if the alias exists (positive or zero return value) and
>*              if the field exists (positive nonzero return value) and
>*              the position of the field in the table, which some of the calling
>*              routines make use of.
>*
>* Programmer:  Thomas Ganss
>* Commentary:  Russell Campbell, Thomas Ganss
>* Copyright :  BSD License
>* Date      :  10/29/2001
>* Revisions :
>*------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>function  FieldNumInAlias(tcField, tuAlias)
>	local laFieldsArray[1]
>        #if .t. && Have not tested, which options are faster (might depend on fieldnum!)
>        return iif (afields(laFieldsArray, evl(m.tuAlias, alias())) > 0 ;
>		    , ascan(laFieldsArray, upper(alltrim(m.tcField)), 1, -1, 1, 14) ;
>	            , -1)
>        #else
>        return iif (afields(laFieldsArray, evl(m.tuAlias, alias())) > 0 ;
>		    , ascan(laFieldsArray, alltrim(m.tcField), 1, -1, 1, 15) ;
>	            , -1)
>        #endif

>
>had not looked them up recently <g>. But these near one-liners make me wish for a better pre-processor:
>such code SHOULD be non-redundant and held in one place, but also SHOULD be inlined into the code automatically to eliminate the function call overhead. You would need a scheme/name convention for laFieldsArray...

It would be fantastic to have some better kind of pre-processor.

FieldNumInAlias should just return the field number. I've taken to generating an error when the passed alias doesn't exist.

I ask you to consider that if you needed to check for a field's existence and act on that in some way, you would be better off having a IsFieldInAlias because calling FieldNumInAlias would take longer and do things not required by the need.

Having both let's programmers decide which function to call as appropriate.