>>Good to see you.
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>I haven't forgotten the beers we planned :)

Neither have I and I'm thristy.:-)
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>>That's not exactly the way BINTOC() works. It first does and exclusive OR on the most significant bit which is the sign. Positive numbers have it set, negative have it cleared. It then inverts the order of the bytes. Normally this is stored low byte to high byte. BINTOC() uses high byte to low byte.
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>Right - I knew there was some more internal jumble, but couldn't remember which. Well, if this world was based on Motorola processors, we wouldn't have this trouble - it stores high byte first.

And Steven Jobs would be the subject of the US Dept. of Justice suit.:-)

>I think the basic story remains - VFP does use BinToC() internally to build integer keys. Gurus?

Send the top of a new convertible to...and receive your very own Computer Guru certificate.:-)

Seriously, I think the advantage (if I remember correctly) of BINTOC() is faster response times. I think it may have to do with the way strings are compared for being greater or less than as opposed to numeric values. I could be wrong about this.