[ic] state and b_state mysteriously truncated to 10 characters

[John1]

Please can anyone cast any light on why state and b_state are being 
truncated to 10 characters.  Trying to find the reason is driving me crazy 
?-( ...

We use Interchange in the UK and use the "state" and "b_state" fields to 
record the full name of the County.

The county/state name is frequently longer than 10 characters so we changed 
these database fields (we're using MySQL) to VARCHAR(32) from the default 
VARCHAR(10) (which perhaps not coincidently is the default in the Foundation 
demo?).

However, the strange thing is that the value of "state" and "b_state" 
collected on the checkout page seem to be truncated to 10 characters 
*during* processing of the order.

Now, I thought I could track down the source of the truncation by logging 
the value of state and b_state during the Order Route.  I scattered the 
following tag at regular intervals in log_transaction:

[tag op=log file="logs/states" interpolate=1 hide=1]
state: [value state]
b_state: [value b_state]
[/tag]

Sure enough I can see from the log/states dump that the value starts off 
longer than 10 characters, but is then truncated.  However, and this is the 
really weird thing, it seems that the truncation is being done by some code 
running in *parallel* with the log_transaction code!  Because, if I relocate 
where I put the [tag op=log..] tags within log_transaction, the truncation 
appears to occur at different points!  i.e.  The truncation can't be done by 
code in log_transaction, but there must be something running in parallel 
that suddenly truncates these values.

Please please can anyone give me some clues as to what might be going on. 
It's got me completely stumped and confused ?-(

Any clues at all would be really appreciated.  Thanks