>FYI---
>thanks for your help... One of the Vars turned up null. used NVL to fix.
>I knew a null+non null=null
>didnt know Foxpro didnt reassign if new val evaluates to null
>interesting and weird am I missing a concept?

Brian,

Not that I know of. When I tested this;

c1 = ""
c1 = NULL
c2 = "Test"
c3 = "Test1"
c2 = c1 + c3
?c2

I got NULL as the value of c2 so ti was changed