>Am I correct in assuming that the proper, and only way, to search for a string CONTAINED within a given field is to use the CONTAINS operator within my SQL statement like this:
>
>SELECT * FROM nameplat WHERE ALLTRIM(UPPER(lcSearchString)) $ (field_searched).
>
>And does "field_searched" have to be an actual fieldname, or can it be a variable that is used to reference any of several fields that the user can choose from.
>
>I am trying to give the user the ability to do "fuzzy searches" on a few select fields.
>
>Thank You.

You can place any valid logical expression after the WHERE clause. The exception is a few cases where VFP gets confused by similar commands, notably things like min(a, b) and max(a, b) (this conflicts with the min(FieldName) and max(FieldName), used in the GROUP BY clause).

In other words, to search on any field, I think you should be able to store the field name in a variable, call it lcFieldName, the value to be searched in another variable, lcValue, and then:

...WHERE &lcFieldName = lcValue

Conventional wisdom is that a name expression is faster than macro substitution, but I think that in this case, the macro substitution will be much faster, since the command is generated only once, and then executed for all the records.