>>>>>Peter,
>>>>>
>>>>>I doubt that you may get consistent result with inconsistent information here. The delimited format has limitations, and you ran in one of it when using delimiters that were already used as information piece.
>>>>
>>>>How do you mean, inconsistent information?
>>>
>>>I mean, there are Special/Reserved characters that are used for special purposes, and here they are (quotation marks, ", ') used in particular for delimiting.
>>>If the record contains those characters, then it is no common way to recognize some of them as information, others as delimiters.
>>
>>This is odd reasoning. Of all characters that are used to delimit character values, the double quotation mark is the most common! DELIMITED WITH is especially used to specify the character value delimiter. So, specifying " is a very logical action.
>
>Cannot see any logic to use quotes HERE as delimiters, because they already used as a valid information in the record. There us no way to distinquish between those quotes belong to record, and used as delimiters.

Indeed, if the double quotation mark is the delimiter for character strings AND if it must be removed, then the next commands have a similar effect:

append from tabdeli.txt delimited with TAB
append from tabdeli.txt type delimited with " with character TAB

Apparently specifying TWO double quotation marks does not generate an error BECAUSE vfp expects the delimiter WITHIN these marks. E.g. the next commands have a similar effect. (First add a line to tabdeli.prg that uses the / as delimiter.)

append from tabdeli.txt type delimited with "/" with character TAB
append from tabdeli.txt type delimited with / with character TAB

It appears that if there is NOTHING within, that vfp gets confused and messes things up. To me this clearly is a BUG.

And what do you think of the next examples?

append from tabdeli.txt type delimited with '/' with character TAB
append from tabdeli.txt type delimited with '' with character TAB
append from tabdeli.txt type delimited with ''' with character TAB

Surely interesting results and also indicative that there is a bug involved.


>>>>
>>>>>You need to use the delimiter other than double or singles quotes here.
>>>>
>>>>Most notably the 1st statement is often advised here.
>>>>
>>>>>By the way, I did not have any problem with your fourth statement; and it was the only one that gave the consistent result.
>>>>
>>>>What a coincidence! For the sake of clear code I added a space behind the quote. Please redo the statement, but now without the additional space:
>>>>

append from tabdeli.txt type delimited with '  with character TAB
>>>>append from tabdeli.txt type delimited with ' with character TAB

>>>
>>>Anyway it would be better to avoid using reserved characters/words for not their direct purposes. Otherwise you may get unexpected results.
>>
>>Did or did you not get the error?
>
>Error on the second line.

Glad you found it too.