Ah, you are correct, if you are indexing to a single idx. If you are indexing using the tag keywords, the results will be smaller.
I have a table with 1.2 million records.
If I do the following:
INDEX on ALLTRIM(UPPER(last)) TAG last
INDEX on ALLTRIM(UPPER(first)) TAG first
The resulting file size is 11,365 kb

INDEX on last TAG last
INDEX on first TAG first
The cdx file is 22,731 kb

This also strips out any leading blanks, and forces upper case.

John

>You're mistaken. VFP does not support variable length index keys. As result, an index key after ALLTRIM() will be padded back to the size of the field. Adding ALLTRIM() is not required for index to be it optimazable either because it's optimaziable w/o it already.
>

>upper(thiswhatever)) = upper(m.thiswhatever)
>

>
>The bottom line, ALLTRIM() is useless in indexes at least and dangerous at worst.
>
>>I use alltrim() on the index, which makes the index smaller and optimized when searching on allt(upper(thiswhatever))=allt(upper(m.thiswhatever))