>Hi Fred,
>
>>Why was the length of a character variable changed from 2GB to 16MB between VFP5 & 6?
>
>It wasn't, the 16 MB limit existed already in FoxPro 2.5. But no-one noticed it before. *g* Actually, it was a documentation bug.
>
>>In fact in VFP6/SP3, I can read a file into a character variable using FILETOSTR and be larger than 16MB.
>
>That's strange. It shouldn't happen, because it might cause some other problems later on. I'll test it if I find some time, thanks for the pointer.
>
>Christof

When I use FILETOSTR to read in a large file (>16MB) the system does seem to spend alot of time thrashing the disk. I assume this thrashing is VFP causing Windows to make extensive use of the swap file, but things *appear* to work OK, just more slowly.