>:You have code NVL() in cases where you check vartype() ?
>Vartype() should give you "X" when encountering NULL-Values,
>so nvl() should never be needed in those branches." -- Thomas
>
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>
>Oops, I actually don't have much experience in using vartype(), I mainly use the older type() command. I just grabbed that code from Christof's page. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll do some testing there and see what needs to be changed.

Perhaps ask Christoph if he uses an updated version -might save some duplicate effort.

>Good tip on the potential slowness of the string concatenation -- I'll check that out, too.

Probably the safest way would be to write each "record line" directly into file with one of the ways possible to create files >2GB,
as quite a lot of padding is added to each "cellfield": that way you cannot run into trouble writing out a near 2Gig table...

And you miss out on the large string concat as well - writing out each record line seems like a good compromize ;-)

regards

thomas