>I'm having trouble understanding what the purpose is for NOFILTER. I often do not specify NOFILTER and then I use the cursor in a subsequent SQL statement without any apparent problem.
>
>Also, I've heard the following statement:
>
>"I believe VFP 5 doesn't have the NOFILTER clause; therefore I included an extra field in the following SQL, which should produce the same effect."
>
>

>SELECT CustNo, Sales, .T. as DummyField FROM Table1;
>  UNION ALL SELECT CustNo, Sales, .T. as DummyField FROM Table2;
>  INTO CURSOR Temp
>SELECT CustNo, sum(Sales) as Sales;
>  FROM Temp INTO CURSOR TempSummary
>

>
>How does this take the place of NOFILTER?

There is a good explanation at http://www.ml-consult.co.uk/foxst-09.htm . In your example above, the extra DummyField breaks one of the conditions so that forces VFP to not use a filter.

Another reason to use NOFILTER is if you want to use commands that expect a file system presence e.g.

SELECT (something that ends up creating a filter) INTO CURSOR Temp

SELECT SomeOtherTable
APPEND FROM DBF( "Temp" )
* Above fails with "file does not exist"