>>Dan,
>>I do use related tables Parent (Header) to Child (Page)
>>I'm "on the same page" seeking a cleaner process than
>>Parent contains totalpages and each child a page number.
>>Generating a page number for a new child is simple (C.page=P.totpage+1)
>>and P.totpage increase, but if a PAGE (child record) is deleted, well...
>>Page numbers cannot be reassigned. totpage .GT. actual-page-count
>>
>I spent some time programming in C. And there was a way to refer within an array of objects to previous and next objects. Wouldn't it be nice, if you could do something like this in a DBF. Each record would be the previous record value + 1. Maybe I'm stretching this a little far, but all you have to do is resolve prev and next pointers and the rest would resolve itself.

Would that be a pointer to address pointer? I don't know of a way to emulate that without "re-inventing the wheel" - something like a "Stack List of address' depending on ORDER." But that would require an additional array containing current, next, previous ??? I couldn't follow the result directly to a memory address location for tuple access can I? It is something to think about - and I shouldn't be thinking out-loud. Ed B