So I would like to thank you and Lutz for this solution which works very well. Fantastic.
Denis



>>Does anyone know a good way to remove illegal characters (i.e. disliked by XML) from text strings being exported to XML files. Some of our old databases, even some new, have erroneous characters (special symbols, right angles, odd smiley faces, and the like) which throw XML. We check of course for for XML tags < and >, & and also I pass strings through a whole series of STRTRAN() commands trying to trap and remove these - but all to often, another weird character crops up and throws the XML file. We are not using CDATA. Any hints here greatly appreciated. Denis
>
>

>** This is a complete list of good XML characters in the windows 1252 character set
>LOCAL lcGoodChars,lcBadChars
>lcGoodChars=[]
>lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(9)	&& tab
>lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(10)	&& 
>lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(13)	&& enter
>lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(32)	 && space
>FOR lnGoodChars=33 TO 128
>	lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(lnGoodChars)
>ENDFOR
>FOR lnGoodChars=130 TO 140
>	lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(lnGoodChars)
>ENDFOR
>lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(142)
>FOR lnGoodChars=145 TO 156
>	lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(lnGoodChars)
>ENDFOR
>FOR lnGoodChars=158 TO 255
>	lcGoodChars=lcGoodChars+CHR(lnGoodChars)
>ENDFOR
>
>
>** check the lcValue for bad chars
>lcBadChars=CHRTRAN(lcValue,lcGoodChars,'')
>IF !EMPTY(lcBadChars)
>	lcValue=CHRTRAN(lcValue,lcBadChars,'')
>ENDIF
>
>