How do I recognize a system catalog table?

Hi Family. If I run a query against systables in any database, I can exclude system catalogs from my result simply by adding the clause: WHERE TABID < 99. However, I am putting together a utility that will run against the sysmaster database - tables systabinfo, systabnames. From this perspective, there seems to be no distinction between database tables and the system catalog tables in those databases. The only possibility seems to be in the ti_flags column of systabinfo. without really rigorous checking, it seems that the ti_flags column for a system catalog has the 0x2 bit turned on; non-catalogs seem to have the 0x1 bit and temp tables in the bogus SORTTEMP database seem to have these bits turned off. Q1: Can anyone confirm - with true knowledge - that I have come to a correct conclusion regarding these flags? Q2: Carrying this to an unsurprising follow-up: Does anyone have genuine information (read: Documentation) on what in *&^%! these flags all stand for? It's not in the FM. (That's the fine manual - get your mind out of the gutter! ;-) Q3: Assuming my empirical conclusion to be correct regarding that low two bits of ti_flags, what kind of expression can I use to isolate this digit? I don't know of any bitwise AND operator that works in SQL. I'd like to specify ordinary tables with "and ti_flags = 1" but I just noticed a table whose ti_flags is 0X00000901, so this shortcut fails. Also, the trick of multiplying the ti_flags by 0x10000000 (268435456) to shift the low digit up, followed by dividing it back down will aslo fail, because it will quickly incur an arithemtic error: 1215: Value exceeds limit of INTEGER precision I have already found out that I cannot use bracketed substrings on hex(ti_flags). e.g. hex(ti_flags)[10,10]. I have also noticed that although ti_flags is a 16-bit column, the hex() function displays it as a 32-bit value. So how do I isolate bits in the ti_flags column? Thanks. -- -- Jake (Never yelled "CROWDED THEATER!" during a fire) +------------------------------------------------------------+ | The expedient performance of a task with excessive concern | | regarding its duration-to-completion engenders a virtual | | certainty of diminished benefit therefrom. | | -- Benjamin Franklin (but he said it in 3 words) | +------------------------------------------------------------+