ach, sorry, I meant leading white spaces. NOT zeroes.

like this:

/****** Script for SelectTopNRows command from SSMS ******/

DECLARE @REALNAME varchar(255)

SET @REALNAME = ' Ricki Ricardo'

select LEN(@realname)

select len(RTRIM(ltrim(@realname)))

in this example the ltrim/rtrim works as expected. But for my real life scenario, the leading white spaces aren't getting removed. It's as though the blanks are something other than leading white spaces....but what could they be?