>>I have a situation where there are some files created that have a leading space, e.g. " JUNK.DBF". Is there a way to delete this file programmatically using VFP5? Delete file, !del, and RENAME seem to have no affect. I am able to delete them with Explorer but I don't want the user to have to deal with it.
>>
>>Thanks!
>
>I would like to know how someone was able to start a file name with a space. You can probably enclose the name in quotes to do it -- erase " junk.dbf"
>
>Can you do a X = Getfile(), then do a ? asc(left(X,1)) to see what it is?


Hi Mark,

Nope, it doesn't delete the file. The problem is in some code I've inherited. It's a cost accounting program, creates a table each month for the fiscal year as the person enters a new month. There is a prototype table and the new tables are copied from that. JUL_99CA, AUG_99CA etc. Apparently there is a certain set of steps that will create a table " _99CA.DBF" My problems is that I want to go through past FYs and when I do an ADIR and then loop through the array it bombs on the bogus table.

I can go through and delete all the bogus tables but that doesn't assure that they won't get recreated by whatever means. I would like to delete them through Fox code but nothing seems to work.

Here's a process that will create a file that Fox won't delete.

oFile = fCreate("C:\ junk.dbf")
fClose (ofile)

oFile = fCreate("C:\results")

ADIR(arr,"*.dbf")
cName = arr(1,1)
nCount = len((cName))

FOR i = 1 to nCount
? (substr(arr(1,1),1,i))
? asc(substr(arr(1,1),i,1))
ENDFOR

? "'"+cName+"'"
!del (cName)
erase(cName)
delete file (cName)

? ADIR(arr,"*.dbf")
? (oFile,(arr(1,1)))

fClose(oFile)

The output is:


32

32
J
74
JU
85
JUN
78
JUNK
75
JUNK.
46
JUNK.D
68
JUNK.DB
66
JUNK.DBF
70
' JUNK.DBF'


The file’s still there!! I just found that I can:

!ren ??junk.dbf xxx.dbf
delete file xxx.dbf

Any other ideas?