>>>Thanks to all for your clever responses. I like Barbara's solution for simplicity, and it should work for the simple cases I'll be looking at.
>>
>>Well, my solution:
>>

>>?empty(chrtran(lcTest4,"0123456789.-",replicate(" ",12))) and type(lcTest4)="N"

>>would work for all cases, not only for simple.
>Nadya,
>
>It will fail for following cases
>

lcTest4 = "1-2-3-4"
>lcTest4 = "1.2.3.4"
>

or any combinations of above
Actually, the second returns .f., which it should.
But the first one returns .t., which doesn't satisfy. Good catch!
Thanks.
We can add one additional if:
at("-",lcTest4)<2 (could be 0 or 1)