>Note to self: Do not recommend VFP to anyone doing research and data analysis in the following college deparments: Anthropology, World History, Geology, Classics, etc. <g>

...as these would have to use anything but Long or Short date...

You could always write a custom class which would take a free text and try to figure out the date out of it. You can get it to the point where "4n1299" would yield {^1299/11/04} without any doubt.