I am running the following line of code in vfp to return a sqlserver record set

SQLEXEC(MAIN_DATA_SOURCE,"SELECT REPLICATE(' ', (8 - LEN(ltr_name))) + ltr_name AS paddedlettername,ltr_desc FROM Ltrfile",'testcursor')

when the cursor is returned the field paddedlettername is data type memo instead of character.

now when I run it again with the follwing code

SQLEXEC(MAIN_DATA_SOURCE,"SELECT REPLICATE(' ', (8)) + ltr_name AS paddedlettername,ltr_desc FROM Ltrfile",'testcursor')

the paddedlettername field is of type character.
Does anyone know why and is there a way I could get it to return as character while still including the LEN function ?

Thanks !
Stephen J. Hunt