>>>

>>>NewEmpID=5678
>>>select employee
>>>scan for employee.empid=1234
>>>  currec=recno()
>>>  insert into employee(empid,task);
>>>     values (NewEmpId,employee.task)
>>>  goto currec
>>>endscan
>>>

>>
>>Unless you are doing some other processing within the SCAN...
>>I think the following approach gives an equivalent result. How about
>>
>>

>>SELECT 5678 AS empid,task FROM employee;
>>  WHERE empid=1234;
>>  INTO CURSOR curTemp
>>
>>SELECT employee
>>APPEND FROM DBF('curTemp')
>>

>
>Is there a reason your method would be better?

Cause I thought of it???? <g>

FW(Little)IW

My impression is that taking things out of loops and processing the entire file in one command is usually faster and cleaner. For example

REPLACE ALL myField WITH somevalue FOR condition

rather than

SCAN FOR condition
     REPLACE myField WITH somevalue
ENDSCAN

By taking all the extra record changing out of the equation I think my method will be significantly faster. Of course, significantly faster is a relative term and a large percentage improvement may not be meaningful.

I used big (200000 records) tables with lots of replacements. My tests showed a drop in processing time (5.14 seconds vs 3.83 seconds).

My .02 cents...............Rich

Oh, something else. I don't have VFP 7 or SQL Server. Could one of the real gurus tell me if

INSERT INTO employee ;
       (SELECT 5678 AS empid,task FROM employee e2;
         WHERE e2.empid=1234)

be a legal statement in either???