>>>>>At Least it looked good in theory :-)
>>>>
>>>>I did not try it, but the docs say thats what it will do, (count actual elements, as opposed to the defined array size).
>>>
>>>It does NOT do what the docs say it will do. oh well
>>
>
>
>>No, it does EXACTLY what the docs say it will do. If it's not an array, it's not an array, that's all.
>>
>>If you want to test if a variable is an array or not, you can do:
>>
>>IF TYPE('laArray[1]')<>"U"
>>
>>You can't use VARTYPE here or you could possibly get an error if the variable is not defined at all!
>
>Fred, you're losing me, here. I assumed we KNEW we were working with an array and were trying to find out if it is empty. I created an array, put one element in it and ran the command, which returns the defined size, not the number of elements containing data, which is what I thought it was saying.
>
>What the doc is saying, on 2nd look is that it will return the total number of elements in the array as defined, even if it is 2 dimensional or whatever.
>so if you have:
>

> dimension MyArray(4,4)
> nlen = ALEN(MYArray,0)
>? Nlen && this returns 16
>

>
>My mistake from not reading closer.
>
>Jim

OK, even if we know we're working with an array, ALEN(x,0) will never return 0. There is always at least one defined element, or else it's not an array.