Tore you never cease to amaze me. The logic would not have occurred to me. Works beautifully and sad to admit I have other applications that I can use that in as well. Thanks so much for this.
k

>

index on left(chrtran(myfield,'/','') + ' ',25)

>Replace 25 with the actual length of your field.
>
>>I have painted myself in a corner with indexing problem.
>>I index a field called - myfield -- which contains an alphabetized list of names
>>aname
>>bname
>>cname
>>
>>Except in some of these entries there is a backslash at the start of the field
>>/aname
>>/bname
>>/cname
>>
>>when I index on myfield it groups the backslashes first followed by the unbackslashes
>>/aname
>>/bname
>>/cname
>>aname
>>bname
>>cname
>>
>>
>>Is there a way to set up the index so the following progression occurs
>>/aname
>>aname
>>/bname
>>bname
>>/cname
>>cname
>>
>>index on substr(myfield,2,12) doesn't do it obviously. I need code set up to skip over a /
>>
>>I know some work arounds - like setting up a second field to handle the anomalies.
>>But would prefer a direct solution with a line of brilliant code. Or is this not possible.
>>
>>many tnx
>>k