>Correct - the character is in the second expression is replaced with the >equivalent character in the third expression. STRTRAN() is needed when the >string that need to be found for replacement is more than 1 character or where >the replacement string for a given item is more than 1 character long, so that >if you only wanted to strip CR/LF pairs (CHR(13)+CHR(10)), or wanted to >replace each CHR(13) with the string "CARRIAGE RETURN", you'd have to use >STRTRAN(). For example, I use the followiung to strip down multiple linefeeds >to a single linefeed:

>STRTRAN(test string, CHR(10) + CHR(10), CHR(10))

>CHRTRAN() is better and faster in the case we're looking at, especially since >it only has to be invoked once, and does it's thing in a single pass.

Mike, Ed ...

We had thought of using something like the examples you mentioned for our application however we only wanted to remove leading spaces and carriage returns that occured before the first character. We didn't want to remove spaces or carriage returns elsewhere in the memo field if the user entered them.

Is there a simple modification to the code samples you wrote that will handle removing leading carriage returns and leading spaces only?. If so I would love to use it and get out of the loop I wrote in a previous post.