Brilliant, that was the step that I was missing so far.

The downside is that it is now only a 40% fast than the original though..

Walter,




>>Hi Walter,
>>
>>as I understand your method mades double bytes out of both strings shift the second 8 bits right and bit connect them?
>>
>>The problem is that I not see how this will work with 10 strings ...
>>
>
>

>DIMENSION cStr[3]
>cStr[1] = "ABCDEFGHIJ"
>cStr[2] = "0123456789"
>cStr[3] = "abcdefghij"
>CLEAR
>
>cResult = 0h
>FOR K=1 TO ALEN(cStr)
>	cResult = BITOR(cResult	;
>				,REPLICATE(0h0,m.k-1) + STRTRAN(STRCONV(m.cStr[m.k],12),0h0,REPLICATE(0h0,ALEN(cStr)-1)))
>NEXT
>? CAST(RTRIM(cResult,0h0) AS M)
>

>
>>Agnes
>>>Hi Agnes,
>>>
>>>A total different approach to this problem:
>>>
>>>The following is about 10 times as fast for two strings as the earlier solution, however handling more than two strings needs some additonal logic (process them in pairs and process the result of that again)
>>>
>>>

>>>cStr1 = "ABCDEFGHIJ"
>>>cStr2 = "0123456789"
>>>
>>>cResult = CAST(BITOR(CAST(STRCONV(cStr1,12) as W),SUBSTR(CAST(STRCONV(' '+cStr2,12) as W),2)) as C(LEN(cStr1)*2))
>>>