>>It was only when I was working with dBASE III that I had to resort to BASIC. One advantage (IMHO) of the LLFF is when the data is corrupt. The file I'm working on has some spurious characters in a few records and It's easier (again, IMHO) to catch these and retain the "good" data in those records. Makes it easier to send to the client and say "fix these" when you can give them something to work from.
>>
>>Jen
>Hey Jen,
>I apologize if there is any misunderstanding. Why IMHO's are in (). That's true for me too :) If you have to play with data in a specific way of course LLFF is the way to go. I intentionally said "where applicable" :) This or that way, the best way is the one you know best :)
>Cetin

no need to apologize < G> I've got the little beast running nicely. Now all I have to do is work out some complex validation rules to deal with the high-level crud in the data: "John Smith, MD" and "Dr John Smith" and "Dr. John J Smith" are all valid records, with different (unique) provider #s, the same TaxID/SS# and the same address. Sounds like a bad attack of GIGO to me. After 20+ years in this game (programming, not VFP) I'm getting very tired of seeing the same old bad data entry habits going on.

Oh well... at least they pay me for this!
Jen