Randy,

>Thanks, David. Lauren and I have contemplated an article on usage patterns for TEXT TO, but we've both been too darn busy to commit to it.

Hey, I've got some room, in case you want to put something together over the weekend. *gd&r*** Seriously, though, it sounds like a great article idea.

>As a rule, we strongly prefer the delayed merge strategy-- TEXT TO < var >, followed by subsequent TEXTMERGE(< var >) -- over the use of the TEXTMERGE clause. First, it can avoid the dread "textmerge is recursive" error, which is easy to trigger in a framework or application that does lots of text processing, such as in web applications. Second, it lets you build the string separately from when the merging occurs, and possibly in a different component. This even means the data source need not be open/selected/etc. when the string is built.

Good points all. I ran into the recursive just recently. Controlling the timing of the various merges that might make up a web page certainly allows more flexibility.