>>The ALLTRIM() function is ignored when VFP calculates the size of the result field so it's not necessary to use PADR() unless you want different size of the result field.
>
>Really? I always thought that alltrim() makes the length of the final result ambigious. I use PADR with ALLTRIM in all my selects.

Run following code and see for youself. :)
It's still a good idea to use PADR() though.

CREATE CURSOR test (fn C(20), ln C(25))
APPEND BLANK
INSERT INTO test VALUES ("John",  "Doe")
SELECT ALLTRIM(ln) + ", " + fn FROM test INTO CURSOR test2
LIST STRUCTURE