Unicode Problem

[Dave]

Hi,

I'm reading a string from a file that is stored in Unicode (2-byte)  
format. I need to convert it to one byte characters in order to write  
the string to a database which is later sent to the server.

When I execute the following it gives unexpected results

put uniDecode(myStringData,"ANSI") into myStringData

For instance, before executing the above, myStringData contained the  
following (in Decimal):

84 0 104 0 101 0 32 0 65 0 108 0 103 0 101 0 98 0 114 0 97 0 105 0  
115 0 116 0

afterwards it contains:

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

I also tried uniDecode(myStringData) (leaving the second parameter  
empty) which results in the same string being returned as was input,  
e.g. in this case:

84 0 104 0 101 0 32 0 65 0 108 0 103 0 101 0 98 0 114 0 97 0 105 0  
115 0 116 0


My question is, how can I convert a 2 byte string into a 1 byte string?

Thanks a lot
All the Best
Dave