Hi Peter,
Confirmed in VFP6.0 SP5 also. AFAIK this has always been the way it works. Here's a thinker... before pasting this into your command window, what do you expect the output to be?

padl(123,4,"74")

(a) 74123
(b) 4123
(c) 7123

If you plan on using this feature, you'll probably want to solidfy that in your mind.

>This is to let you all know that I discovered a really nice, undocumented feature of PADL(). It is present in at least vfp7 and higher.
>
>The 3rd parameter can be used to define the Pad Character, says the doc. However, this parameter can be of varying length! An example:
>
>

? "Result: " + padl( 123, 10, "#000000000" )
>Result: #000000123