Fixed Length Numeric Fields

Item Subject: cc:Mail Text Hello All, I need to define a NUMERIC field that must have a fixed length of 2 bytes in an Informix 4GL program. When I define the field as DEC(2,0) it reserves 4 spaces for that field. If I define it as DEC(2), it obviously adds a decimal, which is not what I want. Any other numeric data type INT, FLOAT, SMALLFLOAT etc., it reserves the defined length of that data type. A CHAR data type 2 bytes long does work, but that is not what I exactly want. Does anyone have some useful suggestions? Regards, Nilima