Thanks for the idea Mike!

>If you're concerned about performance yet want to keep the maintainability of a UDF, here's an option that I'm using regularly, when I don't habitually write the formula in the code.
>
>I wrote an article for FoxPro Advisor where I took an expression and concatenated it into a SQL command. I stored the expression in a memo field in a format that supported parameters and named the formula (like a UDF) and managed to keep the speed almost as high as if the formula were hand-coded. I called the resulting formatted expression a snippet. It permits refinement of the formula in a single place just as does a UDF. It's also multi-developer friendly as the snippets are stored in a table.
>
>http://my.advisor.com/doc/17440
>
>You would instantiate the snippet factory object once at the beginning of the application.
>
>This is how the snippet would be in the snippet table. I named it FirstNonNumericSnippet, but you can name it whatever makes it most understandable to you.
>
>At(Left(Chrtran(<>, '0123456789', ''), 1), <>)
>
>This is how you'd use it in an SQL command:
>
>LOCAL m.loFirstNonNumericParameters
>m.loFirstNonNumericParameters = ;
> m.oSnippetFactory.GetParameterObject(;
> "FirstNonNumericSnippet")
>WITH m.loFirstNonNumericParameters
> .SourceStringPlaceHolder = "yourfieldname"
>ENDWITH
>
>m.lcFirstNonNumericFormula = ;
> m.oSnippetFactory.GetSnippet(;
> m.loFirstNonNumericParameters)
>
>TEXT TO lcSQL TEXTMERGE
> select ;
> <> ;
> from sometable ;
> into somecursor
>ENDTEXT
>
>&lcSQL.
>
>HTH

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.·`TCH
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