>Steve,
>
>>>Tom,
>>>
>>>The limitation is actually 255 characters. If you make a to equal 255 characters the function works. At 256 it fails.
>>>
>>>However, if you make the characters different like this:
>>>
>>>a=REPLICATE("X",100) + REPLICATE("Y",100)+REPLICATE("Z",100)+REPLICATE("Q",100)
>>>
>>>?ATC("Q",a)
>>>
>>>Then the ATC command correctly returns 301.
>>>
>>>Apparently there is a limitation if the characters are all the same. I'd guess that internalls VFP parses the string to separate 255 length 'sub' stings.
>>>
>>>
>>Hey Doug,
>>
>>From the docs:
>>
>>

>>Both cSearchExpression and cExpressionSearched can be memo fields of any size.
>>

>>
>>It does appear to be a bug...I guess not that many people have had to do case insensitive searches for long strings for it to live this long.
>
>No argument from me but the behavior I encountered leads me to believe that internally the strings are somehow parsed into groups. In my example I exceeded the 300 characters but only by changing the character itself..
>
>Interesting.

You exceeded 255 characters on the second argument, but not the first. The bug is when the first argument is long.