>>Thank you for your response to Adrian. It was very helpful to me. I was able to cut processing time from 7 minutes to 1.5 minutes by replacing code using ASC(), Substr() and Transform( ,"@0") with your suggestions. (I was converting large PDF's to Hex Strings so that I could put them into a blob field in a MySQL database.)
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>Wouldn't strconv(cBlob, 13) do better? Hex gives you exactly double of the size of the original, while Base64 is only about 60% larger.

Dragan,
Thanks for the tip. I was doing the same thing (using 15). Saving space is always helpful.
By the way how far are you from the beach? My father lives in VA Beach. Next time I get down I'll buy you a beer.