James,

What I wrote (the performancewise bit) is imo the fastest you can get it in vfp, without dlls or flls

>Your suggestion using FUNCTION CharBitNot looks good to me, as that's exactly what I do ... although the internals of my function are different:
>
>

FUNCTION Reversechars(lcChars)
>   LOCAL lnI
>   FOR lnI=1 TO LEN(lcChars)
>      lcChars=STUFF(lcChars,lnI,1,CHR[255-ASC(SUBSTR(lcChars,lnI,1))])
>   ENDFOR
>   RETURN lcChars
>ENDPROC
>

>
>Jim
>
>
>>>Hi All,
>>>
>>>I would like to know whether is there a way to index a table on 2 coulmns, Both are character fields. The First column has to be descending while the 2nd Column has to be ascending.
>>>
>>>Any answers,
>>>Thanks,
>>>JD.
>>
>>
>>As said, everything is possible
>>
>>

>>&& simple solution
>>&& use a view
>>
>>create sql view ViewOnTablexx as ;
>>    select ..... ;
>>        from Tablexx ;
>>        order by Fieldx desc, Fieldy asce
>>

>>
>>
>>Another possibility
>>

>>function CharBitNot(s)
>>    return chrtran(m.s, chr(0)+chr(1)+chr(2).....+chr(255), chr(255)+chr(254)....+chr(1)+chr(0))
>>endfunc
>>
>>select Table
>>index on CharBitNot(Fieldx) + Fieldy tag pp
>>
>>&& performancewise it would be best to build the chrtran() arg2 and arg3
>>&& in the init of your program, you could
>>=_screen.AddProperty(BitNotCharFrom, chr(0)+chr(1)+chr(2).....+chr(255))
>>=_screen.AddProperty(BitNotCharTo, chr(255)+chr(254)....+chr(1)+chr(0))
>>&& or use a loop to build them
>>
>>select Table
>>index on chrtran(Fieldx, m._screen.BitNotCharFrom, m._screen.BitNotCharTo) + Fieldy tag pp
>>
>>

>>
>>There may be other possibilities