>The double equal sign in VFP is the direct equivalent of SETting EXACT ON and then OFF again.

George,

No it isn't :-).

SET EXACT ON will pad the shorter string with spaces to be equal length to the longer and then compare them like the set exact off does. The double equal sign compares the strigns like set exact off and then checks to see if they are the same length, for example;

lcVar1 = "Smith     "
lcVar2 = "Smith"
SET EXACT ON
? lcVar1 = lcVar2 && .T.
? lcVar1 == lcVar2 && .F.

If you need exact equality in string comparison, then the only way to get it is with ==.