As Ken and Markus have said, using SET EXACT ON will do what you need. In addition, you might find my INSTRING function useful here. INSTRING uses the length of the string being searched for to determine the comparison length. It requires only two parameters, the string being searched for and the composite string in which to search. For example, INSTRING( "ford", "THEANDAREFOR") returns .F. because the search length is four characters and the comparison string is treated as "THEA", "NDAR", and "EFOR". But INSTRING( "for", "THEANDAREFOR") returns .T. because the search length is three characters. If you're interested, you can download INSTRING from the UT files section.

>I have noticed that inlist works as if we were doing a compare with one equal sign. IOW, it only does the compare for the length of the expressions we are checking.
>
>cTemp = "ford"
>inlist(upper(cTemp),"THE","AND","ARE","FOR") returns .t.
>
>I would like to use the inlist function because I think I read that it is very efficient, but I only want it to return .t. if the exact match is found.
>
>Is my only option to do something like
>
>upper(cTemp) $ "THE|AND|ARE|FOR"
>
>I see that this works but I have a routine that can run this comparison a few million times so performance is a huge concern or consideratioin.
>
>Thanks in Advance,
>Paul