You're welcome. And yes, I love the climate here. However, I miss the shovelling of snow and driving on slippery roads. :-)

>i was wondering if there was a way to use a count inside a filetostr - quesiton answered.
>i was missing the 'occurs' which is what Jos actually suggested as well in a different avenue.
>thank you tore - this works very well.
>I note your adress change - hope you are enjoying the climate in Aruba.
>
>k
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>>If the table is a dbf and not too big:

>>lcData=Filetostr('timep.dbf')
>>lnCount=Occurs('|',lcData)

>>
>>>I have 250 records in a database called timep.
>>>Each record has 100 fields called p1,p2,p3 ..... p100
>>>
>>>Is there a global search i can do for a tally of the numbers of times the symbol "|" appears in the whole database - without having to count through each field of each record - ie without using scan or for-endfor. ie one or two lines of code.
>>>
>>>thanks for any suggestions
>>>k