>The query is conducted on a cursor without an index. I will attempt to produce a replicable example.
>

Without an index, VFP will read every record. That would be true for all versions of VFP.

>In simple cases, my original post was wrong - the example given is identical under VFP6-7. All this does raise the question, though, why is the logic processing of an SQL Select command so much more inefficient than an IF command?
>

What do you mean by this? Do you have an example?