>>>For me a more relevant question would be to find a way to strip the trailing comma in an expression that has something like these:
>>>
>>>

>>>inlist(upper(MyTable.MyField),'TEST1','TEST2',)
>>>or
>>>inlist(upper(MyTable.MyField),'TEST1','TEST2','TEST3',)
>>>

>>>
>>>taking into account the the entire expression can have other expressions. For example, the entire string could be something like this:
>>>
>>>

>>>"MyTable.MyField2 = '123' and inlist(upper(MyTable.MyField),'TEST1','TEST2',) and MyTable.MyField3 > 33"
>>>

>>>
>>>So I need to find - within the long expression - if the "inlist()" has a trailing comma.
>>
>>That is called treating the symptom and not the cause. The test1, test2, test3 was built somewhere. That is the root cause.
>
>I concur. It would be easy to strtran(builtstring, ",)", ")")... but the list shouldn't be like this in the first, second and any other place.

Right

why bother fixing something quickly when you can ponder on what it all means for days