>Anybody know if there is API routine that will do the equivalent of ASCAN, but will let you specify a given column to scan and return the row number of the matching cell? The problem with ASCAN is that it scans the entire array. If the information across columns is not unique, ASCAN is pretty useless! Doing the search in a FOR loop to access Row,Col is pretty slow. I'm looking for a fast alternative. Thanks!



Mark,
I have written a function which goes pretty fast.
I hope I hope this gets you a little more speed and that
the message format is not too hard to read!

(Sorin@suzy you could learn from this too.)

************************************************************
* Author............: Christopher Lanski
* Parameter List....: Name of the array, what to look for, column number

FUNCTION ASeek(tcAName, tuSeekStr, tnColumn)

LOCAL nRetVal, nElementNo

IF TYPE("tnColumn") # "N"
tnColumn = 1
ENDIF

IF TYPE(tcAName +"[1,1]") = "U"
WAIT WINDOW "Name passed to aseek is not an array"
RETURN -1
ENDIF

nElementNo = 1

DO WHILE .T.
nRetVal = ASCAN((tcAName),tuSeekStr,nElementNo)

IF nRetVal = 0
EXIT
ELSE
IF ASUBSCRIPT((tcAName),nRetVal,2) = tnColumn
nRetVal = ASUBSCRIPT((tcAName),nRetVal,1)
EXIT
ELSE
nElementNo = nRetVal +1
ENDIF
ENDIF
ENDDO

RETURN nRetVal