Sergey, I have done some tests. Your suggestion is much slower (17.2 sec) compared to building a string (0.75 sec) or using TEXTMERGE (0.8 sec). It would seem that for the file size I am using that building the string is a good option.

UPDATE: I am using 10,000 records and combining 3 fields.


>It has been proven that writing to a file line by line could be faster than building string in a memory.
>I would try
>

>lcFileName = "..."
>ERASE(lcFileName) 
>SCAN 
>
>lcLine = myTable.Field1 + CHR(9) + myTable.Field2 + CHR(9) + CHR(13)
>
>STRTOFILE(lcLine , lcFileName, .T.)
>
>ENDSCAN
>cMyString = FILETOSTR(lcFileName)
>

>
>>I need to add extra formatting text between fields and dependent on field contents. So simple COPY will not work. Do you think using SET TEXTMERGE TO VARIABLE will be faster?
>>