>I may not know all the factors for when NOFILTER is unecessary, but I know many of them. If you have an AS in your from list, add a calculated field in your from list, have anything unoptimizable in your where list, have SET DELETED ON and no tag on DELETED(), or join multiple tables you don't need NOFILTER. When you run into problems is when VFP can just use a FILTER and SET FIELDS to create a fully-optimized filtered version of your query. In this case it will do so.

I meant in the simplest cases, where a filter could easily be applied...it still only rarely does it, but just enough so you have to allow for it in code...