>I'm sure this subject has been covered before but here it is:
>
>I'm obliged to provide code that locates a record where the character field is not empty. The said field is a char(35). I am trying to avoid <> or any other show stoppers (like RTRIM() etc.).
>
>The syntax for this Where clause would ideally be identical for SQL Server and VFP (but close is good enough).
>
>If anyone has the info, or benchmarks on the effects of various approaches on VFP, SQL 6.5 and SQL 7.0 please let me know.
>
>Thanks,
>
ED,

Why are you avoiding <>, it is fully optimizable and can do what you want easily;

Field <> REPLICATE(" ",LEN(Field))

will find a non-empty field.