>>But don't you have to lock the string(handle?) in memory first as you have to do for repeated calls in Fll ?
>>AFAIR this exempts it from normal garbage processing, don't you open a backdoor to memory leaks?

Don't know though delighted to be educated! I anticipated the string should be static in memory like C's array of characters if you're only peek()ing, though I take your point if garbage collection could quietly reposition the string- in which case you'd need strpeek() to read the string start every time.

I suspect that Rick's anticipated performance gain includes allocation of memory external to VFP's housekeeping so you can process quickly with persistent pointers and minimal re-reading of start positions or error check or other overhead, then restore the result to VFP variable space if necessary.