>>I have hit a snafu. I have populated a character field with a series of numbers separated by '#'
>>so enos contains the following #26#36#43
>>I now examine the field for numbers and when my variable enum searches for the number '2' unfortunately it finds it.
>>

>>if  enum $ (Enos)  =.T. 
>>

>>
>>is there a way to modify that search line so that it will read that number as 26 and issue a .F. for that search of 2.
>
>Add separator to avoid partial matches. Also no need to compare to .T., result is logical already
>

>if  ("#" + enum + "#") $ (Enos + "#") 
>

oh forgot about that. yes that works nicely sergey - I have added a '#' at the end of field Enos so every integer is bracketed now.
thanks for the solution.

k