>I was given a problem to resolve and found that the offending code was
>

COPY TO &g_proglist TYPE DELIMITED

>
>Of course, the variable contained a space and I know how to fix that. What I'm curious about is how that space got there. The variable is built as follows

>	G_TMPDIR = Sys(2023)
>	G_TMPDIR = Iif(Right(G_TMPDIR,1) = '\', G_TMPDIR, G_TMPDIR + '\')
>	g_proglist = g_tmpdir + SYS(2015) + ".txt"
>	SELECT progtemp
>	COPY TO (g_proglist) TYPE delimited
>

>On my workstation SYS(2023) returns a path with all short names

C:\DOCUME~1\RPUPKO\LOCALS~1\TEMP

but on the user's machine, the path was kind of mixed

C:\DOCUME~1\USERNAME\LOCAL SETTINGS\TEMP

>
>There is no CONFIG.FPW which establishes a TMPFILES directory. I'm curious if anybody knows what Windows setting controls if SYS(2023) returns a path with Long or Short directory names.
>
>Thanks to all........Rich

Your line

COPY TO &g_proglist TYPE DELIMITED

translates into

COPY TO C:\DOCUME~1\USERNAME\LOCAL SETTINGS\TEMP\_20032324.txt TYPE DELIMITED

Since SETTINGS\TEMP\_20032324.txt is the next word after the filename (without quotation marks, VFP parser scans the filename until the first space), VFP can't find it in its keyword tables, and bingo - syntax error.

However, a name expression will work:

COPY TO (g_proglist) TYPE DELIMITED

Use name expressions whenever you have a name of something in a variable - an alias, window name, filename.

[update] Oh now I see you knew this... well I'll leave it here for those who regularly run into that sort of problems. We seem to have one of those few times each month.

Well, check getenv("temp") and see what it returns. If you don't have TMPFILES set in your config.fpw, the temp files should go there, and that's what SYS(2023) is using (I think). The actual location differs from OS to OS, and may also depend on user's settings - "my documents" may be moved elsewhere from the default location.