DOn,

In develeopment, besadies orher sources, SET settings may come from a registry but runtime does not read it. You should always add relevant SET commands to your main program or runtime CONFIG.FPW to make sure that they are the same as in development.
Check http://www.berezniker.com/display/VFP/String+comparison+in+VFP for detailed discussion on string comparison in VFP.

>There were no set ansi or other unusual SET statements. However the problem is solved with "set ansi off". If I understand this right, the "set exact off" which I had included, did not operate in the SELECT statement, and to get the equivalent behavior the "set ansi off" is needed. Would that be a correct interprutation of the situation? Apparently the ON value was inherited from another application which I had run but my users had not.