>>>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.

I tried it again and the following:

SQLExec(lnHandle,'SELECT LTRIM(STR(YEAR(AddDate))) FROM News')

generates trailing spaces.