I know this thread is a little old, but I used to do a lot of this. Check out the DTOC() function, If you do this in the year 1st, then the date, you will get chr values you can include with other chr fields.

>Scott,
>
>Actually - that didn't work either but I got to thinking and the following got me what I want..
>index on lastname+STR(VAL(SYS(11,newdDate))) tag nameDate
>
>1) I had to add the val() to the code, because of the following:
>? type(sys(11, date())) returns 'N'
>? str(sys(11, date()))) returns error
>? str(val(sys(11, date()))) returns a character correctly.
>I don't know why I have to put the val() in, but it works...
>
>Thanks
>Robert
>
>
>>scott