>I'm not really concerned about the disk space use, but the design as a whole. If I design for an address line length of 40 rather than 30, then this affects every usage of that, it means more space on screen forms, more space on reports, etc.
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>Same for things like emails, it would be nice if every email would fit into 25 characters, but a quick check of one of my address books comes up with a 43 character email. The current system I'm working on has a max length of 50, which may be too small. Now if the reality is that emails could be 80 characters, this could mean major changes in forms design and user input forms.
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>Emails are more crucial, they have to be exactly right, addresses - if too long can usually be abbreviated. Last Names of people also need to be accurate, and the maximum lengths are going to depend on ethnic/country origins, since in some countries they tend to be longer than others.

Again, memo fields can give you an unlimited space, but not much space is wasted (none, if you set blocksize = 0).

Or just make a character field, bigger than the largest e-mail address you encounter - for instance, 60 or 70 characters wide.

Hilmar.