>>>What if the field begins with letter ;o)
>>
>>In that case (and in case of padding with any other character)... suppose we have a field padded with a dollar sign:
>>
>>

>>cValue="$$$$$$$22341"
>>c="$"
>>*-- starts here
>>cValue=" "+cValue
>>do while " "+c
>>   cValue=strtran(cValue, " "+c, " ")
>>enddo
>>cValue=substr(cValue,2)

>>
>>This trick to add a space in front (or any other character for that matter - chr(255) would be my choice if the first character that's supposed to remain may be a space) was just to make sure we don't erase any "$" inside the string.
>>
>>Maybe not too elegant - this is what I did back in FP 1.02 :). But it worked.
>
>-----------------------------------------
>
>Dragan I don't understand this line:
>

do while " "+c   && " "+c  isn't condition
>

Ooops... should be do while " "+c $ cValue.