Baan Indexes in Informix

Version: Baan B40c2 with Informix 7.31 (Baan is ERP software like SAP) I want to query the hash fields directly which Baan uses as index fields. Some of these hash fields are contructed of values which contain control characters generated as part of an encoding scheme to convert long and / or other numeric values to text values. I did not realize these control characters cause a problem in an ODBC query. My query kept failing until I removed any and all control characters and used only printable characters. My query was done with embedded SQL within a Visual Basic program. The query looked like this: Dim IDX as string Dim SQLstr as string IDX = chr(127) & chr(1) & chr(2) & chr(83) & chr(2) SQLstr = "SELECT t_orno, t_pono FROM ttdsls041 WHERE hash1 LIKE 'IDX%' This query fails if I use the IDX string constructed of control characters but does not produce an error if I use only printable characters (however no values are matched). Printable characters only are useless because I must use control characters to match the values I am searching for. Am I missing some other way of performing a query where control characters are needed to match a value??? Any ideas folks.