>>Poor performance in VFP applications for the vast majority of cases is data access related in my experience. Bickering over an example with at most a hundred items in the list is just... well...
Agreed that reversing an email list isn't likely to require detailed performance tweaking- unless you're trying to process hundreds per second. I also agree that for many other needs, VFP's antique functions to process delimited files, are very speedy at getting values into a cursor- unless you're using dates, in which case IMPORT seems to screw up the year quite often.
Still, I quite like these sorts of shootouts. Now I know that Getwordnum is speedier for small sets after which Alines is better. I have been using Alines for sets of around 30. If performance did become an issue, I'd look at the few lines of C++ code needed to copy the string into a C++ array then reverse it then clean up.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1