>>>>>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
>
>Because the quick fix makes for a frankenstein's monster of a code base - spreading like cancer, instead of trimmed neat like a rose garden.

last time I was in a rose garden it was full of thorns