Jack,

Great article! I did read your sources and you summarized them well.

I have found this behavior equally as frustrating as you. I never realized the Trim twins did not handle what you call "special characters", "C" and Oracle, my background, has always treated them as white space. One more anxiety pill when dealling with SQL Server.

I always use varchar to minimize trailing snafus. Any time you import data just be super vigilant about getting rid of trailings. Once it is in the DB clean, and you are using varchar, you are home free.