>I don't have VFP at hand to test the following, so you might try it.
>
>

>index on str(val(CatNumber)) + CatNumber tag CatNumber
>

>
>Reasoning:
>
>val() should give 0 for codes that start with a letter. In this case, the second part should resolve ties.

Hi Hilmar, and thanks for the reply. I did try that along the way to my messy solution, but this puts all the alphas at the top (the numerics are ordered right, of course).

I thought the same logic as you were thinking should apply, but for some reason it doesn't...