>>>> Also here is another potential problem, if index expression becomes longer than 255 chars...
>>>
>>>More exactly, longer than 240 bytes.
>>
>>Hi Alexander,
>>
>>Thanks for your response. Actually I meant not the result of the indexing (it would be 29 chars in my case), but the index expression itself. However, I've tried this new expression right now and it worked just fine. It surely looks complex :)
>>
>>

>>index on ;
>>town+UPPER(PADR(TRIM(IIF(AT("=",OWNER1,2)>0,SUBSTR(OWNER1, ;
>>AT("=",OWNER1)+1,AT("=",OWNER1,2)-AT("=",OWNER1)-1),SUBSTR(OWNER1,AT("=",OWNER1)+1)))+ ;
>>IIF(AT("=",OWNER1)>0,LEFT(OWNER1,AT("=",OWNER1)-1),""),25)) tag name1
>

>
>It wouldn't be a problem to use getfname(), getlname() etc UDF or this complex expressions if you're sure this schema doesn't get you into trouble :
>
>owner1 = "sammy b=iron"
>owner1 = "ammy b=irons"
>
>Names are fictitious of course but I don't know a combination might exist or not in US names. Keeping the separators sounds to be a better idea to me.
>Cetin
So, you're suggesting to add a space between last name and first name and probably use padr(26) then. That's a good suggestion, thanks. Other than that, I think, this complicated expression is better, than UDFs anyway