thanks BoDurban,
what i actually want to do is return a random record.
I plan to create a cursor with a randNum column that's just an auto-increment column and the ID column containing the key of the row i want to return. that's why i needed the insert select, but i'll try your advice, thanks! And is there another approach to return a random row?
this might be a stupid question but how do i call stored procedures? I refrained from using them and instead defined all code in programs because i didn't know how to call em.
also, is there a good reference site about visual foxpro? MSDN is not really helpful.