I was calling a function from a stored proc that accepted 3 parameters and returned a value based on how those parameters related to each other.

4th parameter would...

i wrote a function a while back for this same problem

CREATE  FUNCTION dbo.Quote()

RETURNS CHAR(1)

AS

BEGIN

 RETURN ''''

END

beauty of the function is it's always available (without the DECLARE and SET statements), and it can be used...