>I have written recursive code to build a directory structure. It works fine with small structures, but with a large one it takes a very long time. Any hints of speeding such a task up? Any commercial components available?

One interesting possibility is to just use the VFP MD command. It is actually recursive:

* Suppose none of the folders below already exist:
MD C:\Level1\Level2\Level3\Level4
* creates all the intermediate folders, as needed, with the single command
* However, the folder names do not respect case, they are all LOWER()ized