thanks gentlemen. unfortunately you've all just confirmed my nightmare. let this be a lesson to us all (especially me) not to take on projects without knowing at least something about what we're getting ourselves into!

so, bearing in mind your advice, if anyone can offer any good programming practices for the clipper (non-)environment then i'd be most grateful. eg. how to debug, whether there's any help files i can refer to on-screen etc.

many thanks for your time...