If your application will deal only with english words, use SET COLLATE TO "MACHINE". SET COLLATE tell VFP to index the string in a certain order. For example, in french, "é" should be placed next to the "e" and not after "z".

Also, the Hacker's Guide has found some performance problem with index created with SET COLLATE different from "MACHINE".

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>I had a rude awakening recently when I was told that a report of mine didn't work properly. Funny, it worked on MY machine just fine.
>
>It just so happened that one set of indexes were done using SET COLLATE TO 'MACHINE' the other was set to 'GENERAL'.
>
>Surprise, surprise...
>
>Which collate order should I standardize on?
>What's the difference?