>Works fine for me in VFP8. Though I always do Parent.pk = Child.fk in the JOIN condition and not reversed as you did. Don't think it's the problem here.
No, as you said, the problem is not here. Larry did a LEFT join, so ALL records from t1 table must be there, even no records in t2 all records from t1 must be there ano the fields from t2 must be NULLs.
Against Stupidity the Gods themselves Contend in Vain - Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
The only thing normal about database guys is their tables.