Dang.. I missed that. As usual, you've pulled the answer out of the ether.

>Before VFP9, yes. In VFP9, it depends. From VFP9 help:
>
>"In Visual FoxPro 9.0, performance has been improved by eliminating records that do not qualify for the TOP N from the sort process as early as possible.
>
>The TOP N optimization is done only if the SET ENGINEBEHAVIOR Command is set to 90".