>Obviously I am being dense today, but I still cannot see why changing the order of the 2 expressions changes the results.
>
>

select ... where (a.fld2a=b.fld2b) AND (trim(a.fld1a)=trim(b.fld1b))

>
>and
>
>

select ... where (trim(a.fld1a)=trim(b.fld1b)) AND (a.fld2a=b.fld2b)

>
>really ought to give the same results & the results should be consistent regardless of setting ansi (I know setting it to on affects the results & leads to consistent results, but even if off the results should be consistent).
>
>I described the problem somewhere as asking for a list of all people called Len and having fair & then asking for a list of all people with fair hair and called Len. Would you (intuitively) expect to get different results ?

Len,
Sorry but caught off guard :) I surrender.
Cetin