I think, John meant:

select col1, col2 from table1 order by col3. This is acceptable. However, you can not use functions in ORDER BY clause.

>John,
>
>This gives an invalid order by clause error:
>
>create cursor x1 ( c1 c(10) )
>insert into x1 values ( "1 test" )
>insert into x1 values ( "A test" )
>
>select * from x1 order by isdigit( c1 )
>
>
>>David, VFP does permit referencing a column in the ORDER BY clause that isn't in the result set.