PRB: COPY TO TYPE DELIMITED Differs in Various FP Versions

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:

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
   						

Note that the leading spaces are preserved and each field is surrounded by quotation marks.