>>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
>

If your going to do that you should just put it in a loop

x = 'test1    test2 test3    test4  test5       test6'
DO WHILE SPACE(2) $ x
   x = STRTRAN(x, '  ', ' ')
ENDDO