> - use UDF, either write your own specialized, or just standard this way:
> SELECT DISTINCT t.*, ltrim(a) || substrlen(' ' || a, 1, 1) || ltrim(b)
> FROM t;

I just forgot to remove one right space, so here is "final" version of concatenation
using UDF:

rtrim(ltrim(a) || substrlen(' ' || a, 1, 1) || ltrim(b))

or InterBase variant:

rtrim(ltrim(a) || substr(rtrim(' X' || a),1,1) || ltrim(b))

Ivan
http://www.volny.cz/iprenosil/interbase/