I meant to create command line including the semicolon, e.g. inside the text endtext block

text to lcStr
   select field1, field2 ;
  from myTable ;
  where myField = 1
endtext

_cliptext = lcStr

>Do you mean put the semi-colon at the end of each line in the TEXT/ENDTEXT block? I tried that and it is not recognized as a line continuation character but was included in the resulting string.
>
>>You can use ; and then you would not need to eliminate carriage returns, e.g.
>>
>>create cursor myName ;
>>(field1 ..., ;
>>field2 ... )
>>
>>
>>>I need to create a cursor on the fly. The field names are known, but the lengths depend on the length of an equivalent field in a different table. In addition, I need to add a variable number of integer fields. I can do this easily enough by piecing together a string variable

>>>CLOSE TABLES all
>>>CLEAR
>>>USE pop
>>>
>>>lcTry1 = "CREATE CURSOR output (F2 C(" + TRANSFORM(LEN(pop.f2)) +;
>>>             ", CITY C(" + TRANSFORM(LEN(pop.city))
>>>FOR I = 1 TO 10
>>>	lcTry1 = lcTry1 + ",QTY" + TRANSFORM(I) + " int"
>>>ENDFOR
>>>lcTry1 = lcTry1 + ")"	
>>>EXESCRIPT(lcTry1)
>>>

>>>
>>>(Almost) every time I see a post like this there is the suggestion to use TEXTMERGE as that makes the code more readable. I've rarely used this in the past and I can use some help getting it done properly. What I've come up with so far is

>>>CLOSE TABLES all
>>>CLEAR
>>>USE pop
>>>
>>>TEXT TO lcTry2 NOSHOW TEXTMERGE
>>>CREATE CURSOR output (
>>>   F2 C(<<LEN(pop.f2)>>),
>>>   CITY C(<<LEN(pop.city)>>)
>>>ENDTEXT
>>>FOR I = 1 TO 10
>>>    TEXT TO lcTry2 NOSHOW TEXTMERGE ADDITIVE
>>>       ,QTY<<I>> int
>>>    ENDTEXT
>>>ENDFOR
>>>
>>>TEXT TO lcTry2 NOSHOW TEXTMERGE ADDITIVE
>>>   )
>>>ENDTEXT
>>>EXECSCRIPT(CHRTRAN(lcTry2,CHR(13)+CHR(10),""))

>>>
>>>I'm looking for some help in
>>>
>>>1. Making the code a little cleaner
>>>2. Some parameter to TEXT which will eliminate the need to strip the CR/LF characters from the result
>>>
>>>Thanks to all........Rich