thanks mike , both option work ok , as it turned out i decided to go with "and" option , it just really large array group and as such it has about 30 " and " statements per match group of the records it takes about 10k compile for that section , large arrays do take space , i need to write the sorting index routine for this large array in PBP next , not seen any examples where using large data arrays to sort as yet

cheers

Sheldon