>>>>>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)
>
>It's not enough.
>lcTest4 = "-1-2-3-4" will satisfy that check.
>

at("-",lcTest4)<2 AND Occurs("-", lcTest4) < 2

should do.

Right.