Never mind ... TRANSFORM doesn't handle 9s the way I thought it would. Sergey's solution looks pretty slick though.
zahid

>Nadya -
>
>I haven't tried this but I think it should work. The expression:
>(lcMyAPN = TRANSFORM(lcMyAPN, "999999X-X999999X-X999999XX-XX999999X-XXXXXX"))
>should return .T. if the APN matches the format string.
>
>Let me know if I'm right :)
>zahid
>
>
>>Hi everyone,
>>
>>For APN I have this format:
>>999999X-X999999X-X999999XX-XX999999X-XXXXXX,
>>
>> where 9 is a digit,
>> X as upper case alpha,
>> and - is hyphen.
>>
>>I have an UDF, which determines, is APN valid by inspecting each character. I'm just curious, is there more elegant and simple solution (and should be faster, of course)?
>>
>>Thanks in advance.