Wrong. The shorter one will be padded to the 7 characters before comparison.

>If Table1.aID is char 6 and Table2.bID is char 7 or vs. versa using == would result in 0 records match.

>
>Personally I either use GUID or integer PKs, that's why I never had a need to use alltrim. But in Tracy's case (it's her problem) I'd say we either need to use alltrim or pad the shortest string to the longest string length.
>
>You may check this http://www.berezniker.com/display/VFP/String+comparison+in+VFP for better than mine explanation.