James - your intuition was right. While the delimited command eliminated the header record, the customer has a number of other requirements such as blank fields be recorded as ,, and not ,"",. There shall be no "." in the name such as Ajax Inc. etc. I finally got a file accepted but only after I hacked it with notepad until it made it. The error message they have are such that you can't tell anything other than the record number.

So I appreciate you code as I will be needing to use it to create the file.

Thanks again
Gaylen


>Hi Gaylen,
>
>Glad the copy delimted works for you. However copy delimited may not do every sort of CSV that customers want. If you should have the misfortune to encounter the weird ones you can also use low level file functions to get the precise requirements.
>
>For example:
>

>lparameters lcFile,lcOutputFile
>
>afields(laFields,m.lcFile)
>erase (m.lcOutputFile)
>m.lnHandle=fcreate(m.lcOutputFile)
>m.lcSeparator = ";"
>
>local m.i
>select (lcFile)
>
>scan
>	lcLine = ""
>	for i = 1 to alen(laFields,1)
>			m.lxValue =evaluate(laFields(i,1))
>		if !empty(m.lxValue)
>			m.lcValue = ALLTRIM(transform(m.lxValue))
>			m.lcValue = strt(strt(STRTRAN(m.lcValue,"'",""),["],""),[,],"")
>			m.lcValue  = ["]+alltrim(m.lcValue) +["]
>		else
>			m.lcValue = ""
>		endif	
>		m.lcLine = m.lcLine+m.lcValue+m.lcSeparator
>	endfor
>	m.lcLine = substr(m.lcLine,1,rat(m.lcSeparator,m.lcLine)-1)
>	fputs(m.lnHandle,m.lcLine)
>endscan
>fclose(m.lnHandle)
>select (m.lnSelect)
>

>Mind you, copy to... -> filetostr -> manipulate -> strtofile is another way to skin the cat.
>
>>Thanks Edward
>>
>>That works just fine. It eliminates the header and encloses the text fields with " ".
>>
>>To the others also that quickly responded I say
>>
>>Thanks!!
>>Gaylen
>>
>>>>I need to create a comma delimited file from a table with " " around the alpha fields. Copy to xxx type csv works fine except it creates a header record of the fields. The bank wants the csv file without the header.
>>>>
>>>>Any quick fixes for this.
>>>>
>>>>Gaylen
>>>
>>>Try COPY TO ... DELIMITED