>>I guess I'm not understanding how this is happening then. I could see if the CENTURY was ON and it created an index key along the lines of "MM/DD/YYYY" and then you tried to create a key which was "MM/DD/YY" as possibly generating an error. And I could see if it created a key with CENTURY OFF using "MM/DD/YY" and then you tried to create a key later with it ON which was "MM/DD/YYYY" and definitely generating an error.
>>
>>But how does it generate an error under any condition when the key is the same length? Seems like a bug in VFP9SP1 and not anything wrong with your logic or usage.
>
>If there is a potential of returning different values, this function should not be used. I think VFP Help can be a bit more explicit here. I am using community supported VFP help, so I suggest to update this topic with more information as why this function should never be used for indexing without second parameter. BTW, it doesn't make sense to use DTOC as is anyway, because the rows will not be properly sorted.

Thanks