Tom,

>I must retreive data from an existing database where they are in both character and memo fields (data-plural, datum-singular), and then export them to a text file while delimited as a character field within each record. The memo data are less than 256 characters in each instance...

You can pull the data into a temporary cursor with a SQL SELECT command, using the PADR() function to transform the memo field into a character-type field of fixed width to assure getting all the data, then output from there to a delimited file.

This will give you just the first 254 chars of the memo, but will work:

field1     C 10
field2     C 10
memofield  M

SELECT field1, field2, PADR(memofield,254) AS wasmemo ;
  FROM mytable ;
  INTO CURSOR temp ;
 WHERE field1 = somecondition
* create comma-delimited file
COPY TO newfile TYPE DELIMITED