That's what I thought, but when I looked in MSDN (say for trim() and trim$()) it shows the return as variant for both. And when I did ?VarType(Trim(" ABC")) and ?VarType(Trim$(" ABC")) in the IW both show as 8 (string).

I was just looking for confirmation. No big deal.

>>What's the difference? I had read that the $ returns as a string instead of a variant, but MSDN shows the exact same description for all the functions with a $.
>
>You have multiple function that have a $ version (mid$, right$, left$, chr$, format, ucase, ...).
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>For all these functions, VB implements 2 versions: a variant version and a string version.
>
>Since a string is processed faster than a variant, you should use the $ version when manipulating character-based parameter.