>>>I was unaware of that as well. It's a little frightening that VFP does that IMO. :-)
>
>This was discovered by accident when an accreditation process required numeric values in an output file to be set "blank" in error states. 0 is a common value and different from BLANK. Export does an awful job of .NULL., leaving the field out altogether. Solution = use a char field and GATHER into it. The beauty of Variant variables and ancient commands from days when floppy disks and flat files were used to move data between systems. ;-)

Does the same thing work with GATHER NAME foo? If foo's members are not the correct type, are they auto-cast?