>You must remember that when dBase was born, no SQL syntax or like() function existed at that time, so this kind of comparisons where an adventadge, and not a problem. Even today they are used for variuos user cases.


More just a point of history, but the origins of the SQL language pre-date dBase (though there wasn't any implementation in dBase at the time).

SQL dates back to the 1970's, and the first official SQL ANSI standard came about in 1986 (which, if I recall, is around the time that dBase III Plus was released)