>>Hi I am upgrading a system originaly written in Fox 2.2 (I think it was
>>2.2) for DOS. I'm converting it into Vis Fox 6. Some of the index tags in
>>the tables use character prime key fields and do this with DATE fields.
>>
>>'primekeycharacterfield' + STR(999999-(AS_DATE-{01/01/1900}),6)
>Why make a Descending index at all? You can do:
>
>SET ORDER TO MyTAG DESCENDING
>
>to switch the order.

As Hilmar pointed out, this allows you to make the first field ascending and the second one descending. It could very well be faster than SELECT...ORDER BY 1, 2 DESC.