Hi Doug,
Thanks for the response. Your examples prove my point. Unlike the original index expression that started this thread, you put a delimiter (either comma or space) between the two trimmed fields to avoid the confusion of two people, one named DAVID AVIS and the other named DAVI DAVIS.
-Dore

>Hi Dore.
>
>>Wouldn't trimming and concatentation in this way lead to potential errors.
>
>I only use this type of construct under very special circumstances, such as concatenating trim(LASTNAME) + "," + FIRSTNAME or trim(FIRSTNAME) + " " + LASTNAME.
>
>Doug