>>I'm working on a project where I need to shred a string (ala shredding and XML string) into a set of tables. The string is passed to me by a call to an *.OCX. The typical length of the string is 43K+ bytes. The string structure looks like this: >> >>Data-Pair /pair delimiter/ Data-Pair /pair delimiter/ etc. >>There are additional delimiters inside each data-pair. Essentially a data-pair consists of a delimited string that defines the schema and also separates the schema from the actual value. A Data-Pair ends up looking something like this: >>Grand-ParentField/Delimiter/ParentField/Delimiter/Field/Value Delimiter/Value. >> >>My "parsing" engine works, but it's very slow. (About 2-3 seconds per string on a PII 300 Mhz notebook.) I need to get down to sub-second times without simply buying a faster notebook. I'm working on enhancements to make the string shorter. But I'm also looking for a way to more efficiently pass through the string as I shred it. That's what this post is for. So far the most efficient method of parsing the string is this: >> >>Do While .T. >>DataPair = SubString( LongString, 1, At( , LongString )- 1 ) >>* Parsing code goes here >>LongString = SubString( LongString, At( , LongString ) + 1 ) >>If Len( LongString ) = 0 >> Exit >>EndIf >>EndDo >> >>I've tried NextWord from foxtools, ( I'm running VFP 6 ) but it's actually slower than this approach is. >> >>Ideas anyone on a better way to work my way through the string? > >A lot of my ideas get shot down by my betters........but that's how I learn. > >My idea on this one is something on the order of >

>LongString = STRTRAN(LongString,Delimiter,CHR(13)+CHR(10))
>N = ALINES(aMyArray,LongString)
>FOR I = 1 TO N
>    ParseRoutine(aMyArray[I])
>ENDFOR
>

Your suggestion cut the parse time to less than half a second. Thx : )