Very strange SQL problem

Hi, We have a table with 4 char columns. The data file has the following format: 22|John,Doe|333|Ab123456<tab>^M where <tab> is a tab (!!!) and a carriage return. I used "load from ...." command from dbaccess to load into tableA. When I do a select * from tableA, only first 3 columns show up. when I do select * fromtableA where column4 matches "Ab*" , I get nothing . What's going on here ? For a data file, does it matter if we have tab at the end or not. If it is a problem, why wouldn't informix complain instead of loading. We are using ODS 7.13 UC2 on solaris 2.4. Thanks Keith