>>
>>it is somewhat hard to know where a table name begins in (at least for the examples
>>you gave you can find where each name ends with an AT() and other such commands
>>if there was a space before each table it would be easier
>>note however that what ever you do will also return object names from expressions
>
>
>If your expression always uses '.' and '*' characters, how about something like this:
>
>

>lcInput = 'mytable.amount*yourtable.rate*anotherTable.taxes'
>
>DO WHILE LEN(lcInput) >0
>
>  *search for the first dot
>  ? substr(lcInput, 1, AT('.', lcInput)-1)
>
>  *search for the next table
>  lnNextTable = AT('*', lcInput)
>  IF lnNextTable > 0
>     lcInput = substr(lcInput, lnNextTable+1, LEN(lcInput))
>  ELSE
>     lcInput = ''
>  ENDIF
>
>ENDDO
>
>Claude

Actually, expression can be any char/numeric/logical...

But I guess, this is starting point... I will give it a try..

Thanks...