Thanks Sergey,

>I would use (not tested)

UPDATE ... SET field = RTRIM(field)
>  WHERE field LIKE (RTRIM(field) + ' %')

Yeah, that should help cut it down a bit.


>I also would look into ways to eliminate the padding on VFP side.

I already know the answer to this one. Use VFP 8 and the cursor adaptor class. And that will happen hopefully sooner rather than later, but until then database and backup file bloat is causing some inconveniences.