>>>It is not recommended to put the alias inside the index expression.
>>
>>Unless it's an alias of another cursor :). Then it's a must.
>
>Yuck! I hope never to see that again.

But my friend at the next keyboard was dazzled when I mentioned the idea. Said "what kind of party must be going on in your head, when you can think up a thing like that". That's priceless.*

Last time I saw it used was before FP2.0. As soon as we got internal SQL, I just rewrote everything that was using special indexes.

* I don't know whether I invented this over-the-shoulder indexing. I think not, but then maybe I did. That's buried somewhere deep in the murky memories of 1989. Even if I did, I surely wasn't the first one who did.

No, I didn't. Now I remember the weird error I was getting when I'd open that table with that index, and it would complain with 'alias not found'... took me a while to understand why. Anyway, didn't want to disappoint my friend. Let him think I'm crazier than I am :).