Ok - if I prompt the SELECT statement and leave out the ) it adds it in - but 
not if I just enter it in. It's the prompt that says "Hmmm - user  forgot 
the ) I'll put it in for him" - entering it in lets you know your an 
idiot.... :-)

I don't get it what is trying to be said - I get the expected error of Token 
<END-OF-STATEMENT> was not valid Valid tokens: ),.

When I tried it, it did not add the ). See my error message below...

Morris is right. SQL sees 'blah' as a field and gently adds a closing ')' to the
statement (V5R3).

From STRSQL....

From where? From STRSQL I get, not unexpectedly, Token <END-OF-STATEMENT> was
not valid. Valid tokens: ) ,.

This works for me

Select * from table where Fld = Char(blah