Hi Hilmar,

>The resulting variable length can cause problems in some cases, like >indexing. In your SELECT example, if the first record in the table happens >to be empty, the length of the resulting expression will cause problems.

It is false, also if first record is NULL,empty or another string or memo field.

CREATE CURSOR mcur ( a c(1) null)
INSERT INTO mcur VALUES (null)
SELECT LEFT(a,212) f1 FROM mcur INTO CURSOR pippo
? FSIZE('f1','pippo')

If you analize VFP indexing, you found this:

VFP not support variable lenght index keys.

INDEX ON cField        TAG tag1
INDEX ON RTRIM(cField) TAG tag1

have equal key set.

Fabio