>>>>>I have a situation where there are some files created that have a leading space, eg. " JUNK.DBF". Is there a way to delete this file programmaticly 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!
>>>>
>>>>Have you tried using VFP's ERASE with name expansion? Try something like:
>>>>
>>>>ERASE (FULLPATH(' JUNK.DBF'))
>>>
>>>Nope, I get a file does not exist notice.
>>
>>Are you certain that the leading character is a space? I can get the following to work:
>>
>>cVar = 'this is dummy text'
>>=STRTOFILE(cVar, ' JUNK.DBF')
>>ERASE (' JUNK.DBF')
>>
>>with no problem under VFP6 with SP3 installed, at least under NT. I haven't tried it under Win9x.
>
>Hi Ed,
>
>Doesn't work with VFP5a version date 10/21/1997. < shrug >

You have several options open - the WSH has an automation object, Scripting.FileSystemObject, which provvides an ActiveX interface to the Shell functionality for deleting files. You could also try using the API call DeleteFile:

 DECLARE INTEGER DeleteFile IN KERNEL32 STRING @ lpFilename
IF DeleteFile(' Junk.DBF') # 0
   * it worked
ELSE
   * it didn't
ENDIF

>
>Jim