Hi John

I don't understand. Normally, I'd have a table with an existing index.
INDEX ON FIELD TAG SOMETAG

If I had to call a program to extract the data, I'd

DO SOMEPROGRAM WITH "FIELD = 'S'"
SELECT C_SOMECURSOR
BROWSE NOWAIT
RETURN

SOMEPROGRAM.PRG
LPARAMETERS tcFilter
SELECT * FROM SOMETABLE WHERE &tcFilter. INTO CURSOR C_SOMECURSOR
RETURN

Does the program you're calling want the name of an index or does it actually want an index command string?

Bear in mind that creating the index on the fly involves looking at every record in the table. That is not going to be fast unless you have relatively few records.

>No I really mean an index as in "index on this field". I have to pass an index that will only provide the data that contains an "S" . I just can't figure out how I can do this. I'm hoping that there is someone that has figured out a way. I know I can use substr and other functions to filter or select the information in the where but I need to create an index for the table. The table and index are passed to a program that will use it to get only the rows that contain an "S".
>
>John