Hi George,

>>From Steve Black's "Text" session at DevConnections, John's would be more efficient. Some VFP optimization on StrVar = StrVar + ...
>
>Bill,
>
>I'm not so sure about that. See below

clear
>lcfoo = 'ABCDEF'
>lnstart = SECONDS()
>FOR lnj = 1 TO 10000
>  lcresult = ""
>  FOR lni = 1 TO 6
>    lcresult = SUBSTR(lcfoo, lni, 1) + lcresult
>  NEXT
>NEXT
>lnstop = SECONDS()
>? lnstop - lnstart  && Faster
>
>lnstart = SECONDS()
>FOR lnj = 10000 TO 1 STEP -1
>  lcresult = ""
>  FOR lni = 6 TO 1 STEP -1
>    lcresult = SUBSTR(lcfoo, lni, 1) + lcresult
>  NEXT
>NEXT
>lnstop = SECONDS()
>? lnstop - lnstart && Slower

I ran this test enough times to be convinced that the first instance was always going to be faster (by about 2%). NBD. What was interesting was that the second nested iteration structure had to be changed. Originally, the lnj variable was incremented. I got an error message and had to change it to the above.

Your examples don't include the case that John had and I referenced. i.e.

lcresult = lcresult + SUBSTR(lcfoo, lni, 1)
<\PRE>

Or am I blind? <G>

Bill Armbrecht
VFP MCP