>I think I mis-stated my problems. Scan and endscan work fine and I think I understand their basic workings...it gets much more interesting when trying to do things like:
>
>Scan while ssn='123-45-6789'
>if there are equal birthdates in this scangroup;
> check for equal firstnames;
> delete one or more of them
>endif
>endscan
>go on to the next ssn
>
>The difficult piece is the creative code around and inside the scan loop that does these tests successfully!

looks pretty trivial - write a SQL select to get the unique set of SSNs, wrap it around the scan, do a SEEK.

BTW, you have a problem if you have two identical SSNs with different birthdays...