Hello Mark,
you can use the external functions (UDF) substr in interbase too. You must
declare it, like Helen wrote you.
Regards, Walter.

> Thanks everyone for your replies,
> Unfortunately, I'm pulling the data from Interbase, so I can't
> modify the db and add the udf for the functions. This question
> related to another that I have on this board, where I'm having
> trouble with pulling out data from IB, and the data contains the
> trade mark (tm) symbol, but it IB errors every time I read those
> records. It will do a search and find those records on that search
> criteria, but when I move to the record, it errors.
> So my cheat work around, was going to be search those records, rip
> apart the value in the field, except the the one chartacter that I
> don't want, replace it with a know chartacter, migrate the data,
> then replace the known character back to the original.
>
> So what I need is a way to use the substring functions, without
> modifying the original db files of engine setup in any way, and
> modify the string in the db, then do my migration.
>
> Anyone have ideas on how to accomplish this?
>