>>>>Is there any gotcha using == as a standard?
>>
>>I have seen issues comparing fields of unequal length, where == always fails.
>
>Why are they issues?
>Shouldn't it be failing?
>
>"John" does not equal "Johnny"
>
>The = operator has caused more bugs for me than any single feature in VFP (had one last week.)
>
>Why anyone would have a language state that "A" = "" is beyond comprehension.

This is something that came from dBase times, and once you learn how it works, you know how and where you can use it.

You must remember that when dBase was born, no SQL syntax or like() function existed at that time, so this kind of comparisons where an adventadge, and not a problem. Even today they are used for variuos user cases.