>>Not quite it. I want to pad with nothing. It seems that the other guy (working in powerbuilder and sybase's SQL anywhere) is kinda working with SET ANSI ON -- that is to say, "CERT " # "CERT" so I need to only write the first four characters... I think its an ODBC setting or something, at least I hope there is something like that.

>You may call stored prosedure which will use SUBSTRING function (I guess Sybase and SQL-Server both use identical functions) to force left characters only, though I have no idea how Sybase actually stores data.
Edward Pikman

You mean create the stored procedure in SYBASE? Ouch... Would I have to do that for every field? I was hoping there was a way to tell foxpro not to pad with spaces with INSERT-SQL... That way, it would take care of all the fields, including name, address, etc.