Passing Dates from VB 4.0 to INfx 7.2

I'm trying to pass a date to an informix stored procedure from Visual Basic. I've defined the date on the VB side as a string, it's received by the sp as a char(10), yet when Inserted into the date column, I get a -1218. I can cut the execute procedure string from an onstat -g sql (sesid), and execute the exact syntax via dbaccess, and the sp runs fine. It seems that VB (or the ODBC driver) may be adding a control character (or something) that is not 'visible' to the naked eye... This also happens when the field on the VB side is defined as a Date... I thought passing dates would be fairly straightforward..... unlike datetime, where VB seems to only handle precisions of year to hour, year to minute or year to second, etc, etc. VB also truncates the century for 19xx, but not for 18xx or 20xx on a Date field... seems strange to me... Any suggestions?? We are running Informix 7.20.UC2 on solaris 5.4, and VB 4.0 you can email me at ssmidowi@sigg.com