>>The NOFILTER option forces VFP to create a disk file regardless of whether the data will fit in RAM or not.
>>
>>The downside of using NOFILTER is that it may cause the first select to take longer on the laptop than it does now.
>
>Jim,
>
>Something I have noticed recently...
>
>Even using nofilter does not force VFP to create a file on disk
>I have a few select statements with nofilter in them - I try doing a file(dbf()) check on them and they return .f.

The disk presence referred to is in the form of taking up a presence in one of the TMP files VFP creates for work areas. If there is no disk presence (e.g. use again with filter) then VFP only has a pointer in memory to a configuration that it applies to an already existing table.