Try

SELECT PADR(LEFT(DealNumber, AT("-SP", DealNumber)+2),1) AS TrimmedDeal

W/o padding FoxPro may truncate the result based on the first record.

>OK - here's the situation:
>
>I have a table with a field, dealnumber, that could contain the following values (as examples):
>
>ATP-SP
>ATP-SP2
>ATP-SP19
>BP-SP
>BP-SP2
>BP-SP19
>
>I would like to select and group the data by the portion of the deal number that goes up to "SP" (i.e. ATP-SP, BP-SP). I initially attacked this by using LEFT() and AT() as follows:
>
>

>SELECT LEFT(DealNumber, AT("-SP", DealNumber)+2) AS TrimmedDeal
>

>
>That query only returns the first two characters of the deal number (i.e. "AT", "BP"). Yet, when I do the following query:
>
>

>SELECT AT("-SP", DealNumber) AS TrimmedDeal
>

>
>I do in fact get back the right number that could be used as the second parameter to the LEFT() function.
>
>My questions are:
>1. Why doesn't AT() work inside a LEFT() within a SELECT statement?
>2. Since it obviously doesn't work, how can I accomplish what I'm after?
>