I can see where this would be a problem. When pulling from a field, the field's length would be used to set the output for the column.... but if a CONSTANT is used, like 0, then the length will be set to 1 (the engine doesn't know at this point you might want to use larger numbers later in this column).

It's a good thing I can set the CONSTANT to also be the MASK to use to set the column width and precision (so any subsequent values would fall in place and show properly). Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwhhh!!!

And all this time, I thought FoxPro was smart enough to know what I was thinking!!!

>It could happen any time you use expressions that create a variable length result in a query column list.
>
>>That is one little "GOTCHA" I will have to look out for, especially when using the IIF statement!
>>
>>>Yes, in such case FoxPro will try to fit the rest of values for that column in the field size 1. In VFP9 new CAST() function helps greatly to resolve such problems.
>>>