Eric cut a little dity loose here and it got me missing the VFP PAD functions. Eric's the man. I am also uploading this to the files area for other foxheads moving into VB's string manipulation.

' *******************************************************************
' Thanks go to Éric Moreau for this one!! I renamed to PadL and made
' a small change to param order to allow optional padchar Now
' PADC,PADL,PADR works just like momma used to make  :)
Public Function PadR(ByVal pstrSource As String, _
                    ByVal pintLen As Integer, _
                    Optional ByVal pstrFiller As String = " ") As String
    PadR = Left$(Trim$(pstrSource) & String$(pintLen, pstrFiller), pintLen)
End Function

Public Function PadL(ByVal pstrSource As String, _
                    ByVal pintLen As Integer, _
                    Optional ByVal pstrFiller As String = " ") As String
    PadL = Right$(String$(pintLen, pstrFiller) & Trim$(pstrSource), pintLen)
End Function

Public Function PadC(ByVal pstrSource As String, _
                    ByVal pintLen As Integer, _
                    Optional ByVal pstrFiller As String = " ") As String
    ' Used pintLen - (pintLen - 2) and pintLen / 2 to allow non even values
    ' maintaining desired endlength as odd numbers would show up 1 character short
    PadC = Right$(String$(pintLen - (pintLen / 2), pstrFiller) & Trim$(pstrSource) _
                & String$(pintLen \ 2, pstrFiller), pintLen)
 ' Debug.Print Len(PadC) ' Testing output
End Function
' *******************************************************************