>I'm trying to write a formula to work out all the possible combinations of say 2 numbers from a group of 30 numbers ranging from (1 - 50). This formula would need to also work with combinations of 3 or 4 or even 5 numbers as well. The group of numbers may increase from 30 or decrease. I know how to calculate the actual number of combinations I just can't figure how to write the code to list all the combinations. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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>An example of the group of 30 numbers... 1,4,6,9,10,11,14,15,18,19,20,21,22,24,27,29,30,31,33,34,35,38,39,41,42,43,45,47,48,50

Since the number of levels is variable, this looks like an ideal case for the use of a recursive function. The function contains the list of numbers - for example, separated by spaces. Then, it uses the word counting and extraction functions to extract a single number (or "word"). A version of the string should where the number extracted is eliminated should then be passed as a parameter to THE SAME FUNCTION. (That's what "recursion" means - just in case you don't know - a function calls itself.) You also need to pass some additional parameters, one to accumulate the string, and one to count the number of levels (how often the function has called itself); this latter must be incremented at each level. (This is how the recursion eventually ends; otherwise, you'll get something like an endless loop - the function calling itself over and over again, until VFP runs out of stack space.) When the function reaches the last level, it should accumulate the last number and output the result; perhaps write it to a text file, a DBF, or an array.

HTH,

Hilmar.