Hi Karen,

to the first:
place code snippets in pre tags. (See help, also try to reply this message). This will allow the symbols.

I'm not shure what failed exactly (there are some obvious errors and some not so) but try

FN = 1
strtofile('','m.txt')
for fn = 1 to 83
 FNO = "xp"+TRIM(PADL(fn,2))+".prg"
 if file(fno)
  strtofile(filetostr(fno),'m.txt',1)
 endif
NEXT

You may also consider to use ADIR() to get the files, but if the number is fixed to 1 ... 83 this might be not usefull.

Note: The code above has limitiations if one of the files above is to large. In this case you would need the read the files lowlevel

HTH
Agnes
>i have group of files stored separately from xp1.prg to xp83.prg
>i would like to assimilate all into one text file. This was my modest attempt to do so - it failed
>what am i doing wrong?
>
>FN = 1
>lcbody = " "
>do while fn (lessthan ) 83 &&apparently i can't use the less than symbol for the posting
>FNO = "xp"+ltrim(str(fn))+".prg"
>if file('&fno')
>copy file &fno to m.txt addit
>lcBody =lcbody+filetostr('m.txt')
>endif
>
>fn = fn+1
>loop
>enddo