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Q305931: INFO: DELIMITED WITH BLANK Differs in Various FoxPro Versions

Article: Q305931
Product(s): Microsoft FoxPro
Version(s): 3.0,3.0b,5.0,5.0a,6.0,7.0
Operating System(s): 
Keyword(s): kbvfp kbvfp300b kbvfp500 kbvfp500a kbvfp600 kbXBase kbGrpDSFox kbDSupport kbvfp300xSear
Last Modified: 23-AUG-2001

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The information in this article applies to:

- Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows, versions 3.0, 3.0b, 5.0, 5.0a, 6.0, 7.0 
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SUMMARY
=======

The behavior of the COPY TO ... DELIMITED command differs slightly in each
version of Microsoft FoxPro and Visual FoxPro (VFP). You should be aware of
these differences when moving code between versions.

MORE INFORMATION
================


The different versions of FoxPro produce slightly different text files using the
same command. Depending on the version, leading spaces may be truncated or
quotation marks may be added to character fields.

For example, COPY TO filename DELIMITED WITH BLANK in FoxPro 2.6a produces a text
file that does not contain quotation marks around the character fields. If a
character field contains leading spaces, they remain. Visual FoxPro 3.0,
however, trims these leading spaces. Both these behaviors are contrary to the
COPY TO documentation, which states in VFP 3.0:

  DELIMITED Creates a delimited file. A delimited file is an ASCII text file in
  which each record ends with a carriage return and linefeed. The default field
  separator is a comma. Since character data may include commas, character
  fields are additionally delimited with double quotation marks.

  DELIMITED WITH BLANK Creates a delimited file with fields separated by spaces
  instead of commas.

Visual FoxPro 5.0 and later behave correctly, including leading spaces and
delimiting character fields with quotes. DELIMITED WITH " " removes the quotes,
but replaces them with extra spaces.

In Visual FoxPro 5.0 and 6.0, attempts to remove the character field delimiter
altogether fail in different ways. DELIMITED WITH "" and DELIMITED WITH [] give
the following error:

  Command contains unrecognized phrase/keyword.

DELIMITED WITH '' treats the first quote as a delimiter and ignores the second
one.

However, Visual Foxpro 7.0 has been enhanced so that DELIMITED WITH "" does not
give a syntax error. This allows you to create text files that have no quotes
around any fields, which is desirable in some cases.

To observe these various behaviors, run the following code in FoxPro 2.6 or
later. Feel free to experiment with the other forms of the command listed
above.

  CREATE TABLE copyTest (cField1 C(30), cField2 C(10))

  INSERT INTO copyTest VALUES ("This is a test.", "Part 1")
  INSERT INTO copyTest VALUES ("     This is another test.", "Part 2")
  INSERT INTO copyTest VALUES ("  This is a third test.", "Part 3")

  COPY TO copyTest.txt DELIMITED WITH BLANK

  MODIFY FILE copyTest.txt

  #IF "7.0"$VERSION()
     COPY TO copyTest.txt DELIMITED WITH ""
     MODIFY FILE copyTest.txt
  #ENDIF

Additional query words:

======================================================================
Keywords          : kbvfp kbvfp300b kbvfp500 kbvfp500a kbvfp600 kbXBase kbGrpDSFox kbDSupport kbvfp300xSearch kbvfp500xSearch kbvfp700 
Technology        : kbVFPsearch kbAudDeveloper kbVFP300 kbVFP300b kbVFP500 kbVFP600 kbVFP700 kbVFP500a
Version           : :3.0,3.0b,5.0,5.0a,6.0,7.0
Issue type        : kbinfo

=============================================================================

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