Chas,

Please read about string comparisons in Help under the SET EXACT command.

It says in part:

"String Comparisons

Visual FoxPro has two relational operators that test for equality. The = operator performs a comparison between two values of the same type. This operator is suited for comparing character, numeric, date, and logical data.

However, when you compare character expressions with the = operator, the results might not be exactly what you expect. Character expressions are compared character for character from left to right until one of the expressions isn't equal to the other, or until the end of the expression on the right side of the = operator is reached (SET EXACT OFF), or until the ends of both expressions are reached (SET EXACT ON)."


>
>How would one know he or she has
> to reverse the Field/variable comparisons????????
>
> Thanks, this is a puzzler.