>I have a string that contains many spaces. For example
>
>

x = 'test1    test2 test3    test4  test5       test6'

>
>how can I format the string to contain only one space between the 'test' values. For example how do get it to do the following:
>
>

x = 'test1 test2 test3 test4 test5 test6'

>
>I thought about using strtran() command but I don't it works the way I want it too.

Naomi's answer is simple and elegant.

You can do the same thing with successive or nested STRTRAN() calls e.g.

x = 'test1    test2 test3    test4  test5       test6'

x = STRTRAN( x, SPACE( 8 ), SPACE( 1 ) )
x = STRTRAN( x, SPACE( 8 ), SPACE( 1 ) )
x = STRTRAN( x, SPACE( 4 ), SPACE( 1 ) )
x = STRTRAN( x, SPACE( 4 ), SPACE( 1 ) )
x = STRTRAN( x, SPACE( 2 ), SPACE( 1 ) )
x = STRTRAN( x, SPACE( 2 ), SPACE( 1 ) )

?x
* Above handles up to 64 spaces ( 8 x 8 )
* Adding 2 more lines at the top with SPACE( 16 ) would increase capacity to 256 spaces ( 16 x 16 )
* etc.

* I suspect the FoxTools REDUCE() function may be a recursive implementation of the above