>Just a thought. Does the same thing happen if you define the array as String rather than Character. I had a problem once in another language about this. The language interpreted Character as a single character, and string as a series. I wonder if that's not the problem here.

It did not seem make a difference if it was CHARACTER, STRING, or DATE. Looks like VFP7 just has a problem with strong typed arrays. Thanks for all of your help.