Thanks Sergey,

>The varchar mapping in queries is controlled by SET VARCHARMAPPING command which is set to OFF by default for backward compability. Are you using RTM or beta version of VFP9?

I'm using version 9.00.0000.1720. That's the beta, isnt' it? I just Googled the number and only found one hit, but it was all Greek to me. Well, some Cyrillic languange, actually. I'm positive I downloaded and ran the install on the ISO image on the MSDN site the day it was released.

I guess I'm relieved the problem is simply a result of my stupidity, rather than something more serious.


>
>>I just upgraded an app and found that the new Varchar is causing some rather surprising issues.
>>
>>I have some SELECT statements which have the traditional: PADR([expr],xx) as FieldName to create fields of the appropriate length in the cursor. Well, VFP9 is now casting these by default as Varchar. Ok. Fine. Well, I also then copy this cursor out to a Fox2x DBF. Pretty common export scenario. Well, the varchars of any length are all converted to memo fields.
>>
>>Am I doing something wrong? I can't find anything in the documenation about this. I'm a tad surprised that the default casting for a character expression is varchar. I'm also surprised that a varchar(10) gets turned into a memo field instead of a char(10) with COPY TO.
>>
>>Do I need to go back and check/fix every SELECT in my code?