>>LTRIM(STR(YEAR(AddDate)))
>>works for me in VFP and SQL. You don't need rtrim().
>
>Ok, but there is still the issue of extra spaces. As I need to use that field for comparism down under, it would have been nice to trim it entirely.

I meant it trims entirely for me :) With numeric values converted with str() I don't see any trailing spaces.
Cetin