>It may, depending on the parameter you pass it. Check help for select(1) and select(0), they do have different meaning from select(). One of them should return the first unused, and the other the highest used workarea - but I actually never needed it, so I don't remember which is which. Don't trust me, therefore, better check the help.

PMFJI, Does it really matter what work area a table is in? When there was a limit of 25 work areas (Fox2.0?) i could understand wanting to know how many were used, or using a specific work area number. With VFP6, by the time you hit the work area limit, you should be re-writing your code to clean up after itself and close some tables it isn't using.

This is the same concept as caring where the fields are physically placed in a table. Since only the developer should ever look directly at the table, the user should only see the records through a View or Grid- therefore it makes no difference where the field falls in the fieldlist.