Probably the .vfp. functions are using the win32 api "under the covers" which are all written in C++. The overhead is what it took to get all of it to work in the .vfp. environment. However, there are far more knowledgable people than me to talk about this subject...
>[snip]
>>Here's what Microsoft says when comparing the 2 development environments:
>>"Q. Why would I build a component in Visual FoxPro when I can build the same component in Microsoft Visual Basic or Microsoft Visual C++?
>>A. Visual FoxPro components are extremely fast, thanks to the data-centric language of Visual FoxPro and its ability to quickly retrieve and manipulate data. Further, Visual FoxPro can build character strings very swiftly. A Visual FoxPro component that works with data and returns HTML will, therefore, be very fast.
>
>So, I guess one might state that the VFP string manipulation functions are very closely tied to the C++ string manipulation functions?!
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>But how about the low-level file functions? It is my hunch that they too are very closely tied to the low-level functions in C++.
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>[snip]