Hi Ed,
>>
>>Your origin was that you said? :) I'm not sure, that I understand the meanning. I'll try at home with my dictionary :)
>>

Yes, my function is not enough. Right now I appended with 3 or conditions. Meanwhile George's IsNumeric function gives me desirable result:

myNumber='12345'
? IsNumeric(myNumber) .t.
? TYPE(myNumber) 'N'

myNumber='123-45'
? IsNumeric(myNumber) .f.
?TYPE(myNumber)'N'

Now I'm trying to compare the difference in speed for long numbers between TYPE() function and IsNumeric function.

>
>Try the following strings:
>
>"-1234"
>"34-12"
>"3.141"