>>Hi David. pmfji - I have a file which does not get updated often, has only a few hundred records, but does contain a memo field which can hold a large amount of text, +/-5Mb. Just to be clear, are you saying that it might be beneficial to pad my text with chr(0) out to some maximum possible size and then to ensure that each replace always pads out to the same size? i.e. ensure that each memo field is always, for example, 6Mb in my case?
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>Basically, the idea is to never let it shrink; let it bloat only when its size exceeds the current max size for that one memo for that record.
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>It's pretty much like
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>replace mymemo with padr(newvalue, max(len(mymemo), len(newvalue)), chr(0))
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>(or chr(32) if that fits your needs better)
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Thanks Dragan. Using your simple

replace mymemo with padr(newvalue, max(len(mymemo), len(newvalue)), chr(0))

is very straight forward and makes for a neat solution. Thanks. I prefer the wild, moutain man picture <g>