99% of my work involves passing data around, usually on different programming environments and platforms; I'm doing something with ADO recordsets (in VBScript), XML, VFP DBCs, MDBs, MSSQL tables, even Oracle on occasion. The DBF deleted mark doesn't directly translate to other platforms, and there's that "DBF index on deleted" issue, where I always forget whether I should index it or not.

On the other hand, every platform out there (at least all the ones I use *grin*) has an integer type and knows a zero and a one. In my SQL, I always pay the penalty of having to include "and iDel=0" in my Where clause of my SQL statements, but being able to use it everywhere is worth the pain.

So I just set deleted off in the top of my VFP stuff and I have parity with all the other platforms - and with other VFP developers who have their own IDE settings and personal rules about using the deleted mark.

>Why would you do such a thing - giving up on the deleted mark and using your own field instead?