>can use getwordcount and getwordnum to retrieve the words wanted.i give you the result in a cursor.
>

>create cursor ycurs (xword c(20))
>local m.partno,m.xw
>m.partno='abc defg hijkl'
>for i=1 to getwordcount(m.partno)
>m.xw=getwordnum(m.partno,i)
>if ! empty(m.xw)
>insert into ycurs values ( m.xw)
>endi
>endfor
>
>brow
>

ALINES() is much, much faster if the string is at all long. I wrote about all this here: http://www.tomorrowssolutionsllc.com/Articles/Breaking%20Up%20is%20Not%20Hard%20to%20Do.pdf

Tamar