Hi Sergey/Tore,

Strange my VFP7 help file says:
Maximum # of tables open at one time(2) 255
where (2)= Limited by memory and available file handles. .cdx files use only one file handle.

Anyhow, thanks! That 'splains it. Now I know at what point an old Pentium 200 with 64 Mb of RAM chokes!:) ... and no, it's not my PC...!

>Ashley,
>
>Maximum # of tables open at one time is 65,535. See Visual FoxPro System Capacities in help.
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>This is not a question, just a comment on the results of some faulty maintenance code I ran yesterday.
>>I was attempting to clean up some archival files by removing possible duplicate records, getting rid of deleted ones, making sure the index tags existed, etc.
>>I use SELECT DISTINCT * FROM &Sourcefile INTO TABLE TEMP, then appended the records to a good, empty "template" file and then wrote the file to a new copy of the original.
>>There were about 2800 files. At 2699 files done, the system slowed to a crawl.
>>I discovered that I had not closed the source files opened by the SELECT DISTINCT * statement.
>>
>>I had 2699 files open in as many work areas! (possible reason for the slowdown :))
>>
>>I thought that the limit was 255.