>G'day again Bruce,
>what about ...
>
>count for thisform.checkbits() != -1 to ncount
>
>(though I wouldn't expect it to be faster than a scan)

The reason I had the scan was that sometimes I had to put an BROW or EXIT in it so I could stop to examine a record that was != -1...eventually I did try COUNT...but it was very slow, I don't think it's suited for this. Then I put the entire Checkbits method into a rather awkward but functional SQL, and pulled off all the records != -1. It's not only much faster, but I have all the bad records to view in a cursor, also...I never tested the COUNT to see if it resolved the memory leak, that would help to prove/disprove the SCAN leak...perhaps if I have a couple hours to spare sometime I'll check it out...