In this case record pointer will be positioned at EOF. As you know, VFP treats it like there's the record with all empty fields. So SUBSTR(fieldx,1,7) would return 7 spaces and STRTRAN(fieldx, " ", "") would return empty string.

>Do you have an idea, Sergey, why on an empty file I *can* index on SUBSTR(fieldx,1,7) yet a STRTRAN will not work?
>