PRB: COPY TO TYPE DELIMITED Differs in Various FP Versions

• Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Windows 5.0

SYMPTOMS

In Visual FoxPro 5.0, the COPY TO <filename> DELIMITED WITH BLANK command places quotation marks around character fields and preserves leading blank spaces within character fields. Other versions of FoxPro create text files that are slightly different in their format. You should be aware of the possible differences if you use this command under a previous version of FoxPro to port to Visual FoxPro 5.0.

WORKAROUND

If the character fields do not need quotation marks around them, use the COPY TO <filename> TYPE SDF command.

STATUS

This behavior is by design.

MORE INFORMATION

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 for Windows produces a text file that does not contain quotation marks around the character fields. If a character field contains leading spaces, they remain. However, Visual FoxPro 3.0b exhibits different behavior. The text file contains no quotation marks around the character fields and leading spaces are trimmed from the fields.

Visual FoxPro 5.0 produces a text file that preserves leading spaces and places quotation marks around each character field. This is the intended behavior of the product.

The following text comes from the "COPY TO" Help file topic:

   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.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

1. Create a table in the Command window by typing:

   CREATE TABLE test (ctest C (30))

2. In the Command window, type the following commands:

   INSERT INTO test (ctest) VALUE ('This is a test')

      INSERT INTO test (ctest) VALUE ('    This is another test')
      INSERT INTO test (ctest) VALUE ('   This is a third test')
   
   

3. Create a text file by typing the following command in the Command window:

   COPY TO test.txt DELIMITED WITH BLANK

4. Open the text file by typing the following in the Command window:

   MODIFY COMMAND test.txt