> Paul, > > I agree that .NULL. can be a strange animal. But I also agree with Jim > Nelson that Microsoft's view of .NULL. is correct. It's nonetheless > inconvienent. What we need is a way of converting .NULL. to a value such > blank or zero when this is appropriate (as in your SUM() example) . SET > NULLDISPLAY and the NULLDISPLAY property are steps in the right direction, > but these only affect the way .NULL. walues are displayed. This doesn't > help in calculations. what about NVL() that returns a non-null value > My original point about .NULL though. referred to the fact that an object > reference can return a TYPE("oMyObject")="O" and at the same time > ISNULL(oMyObject) = .T.. This seems inconsistent. If the object exists, > shouldn't ISNULL(oMyObject)=.F.? If the object doesn't exist shouldn't > TYPE("oMyObject")="U"? VFP (re)defines the type of a variable when you assign a value to it so the type of the varaible is still Object but it doesn't contain any info (because the object was released ) so it is set to NULL Arnon