Malcolm,

If there is a valid number in the mix, ie:

Sfafalea69.6785aervcaer

And all you want is 69.678, then you only need to remove the leading

characters.

Val("69.678adfkjhajkdhf") will return 69.678

No need to remove trailing chars. On the other hand, if you need the

numbers but they are not "valid" numbers, then it's a little trickier.

Also, I would think that your code would need some "Not" statements in

front of the IsAlpha() functions. Or you may want to change those to

IsDigit(). Otherwise, it appears you will exit the loop on the first

characater you find.

The following might do what you want for values that are not true

numbers:

lParamater tcVar

Local lnctr, lcVal

lcVal = ""

For lnCtr = 1 to len( tcVar)

if substr( tcVar, lnCtr) $ "0123456.-+"

lcVal = lcVal + substr( tcVar, lnCtr)

endif

Next

Return lcVal

-----Original Message-----

From: profoxtech-bounces@leafe.com [mailto:profoxtech-bounces@leafe.com]

On Behalf Of Malcolm Greene

Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 12:30 PM

To: profoxtech@leafe.com

Subject: Quickly alltrim non-alpha chars from string

Any suggestions on how I can quickly alltrim all non-alpha chars from a

string via either a clever VFP technique, FoxTools FLL function, or

Win32 API call?

My current approach below. But certainly there must be a more efficient

way?

NOTE: I want to preserve embedded non-alpha chars. I just want to remove

leading and trailing non-alpha chars.

<code>

function fulltrim( pcStr )

for lnChar = 1 to len( pcStr )

if isalpha( substr( pcStr, lnChar, 1 ) )

exit

endif

endfor

pcStr = substr( pcStr, lnChar )

for lnChar = len( pcStr ) to 1 step -1

if isalpha( substr( pcStr, lnChar, 1 ) )

exit

endif

endfor

pcStr = left( pcStr, lnChar )

return pcStr

endfunc

</code>

Thanks,

Malcolm

[excessive quoting removed by server]