>I am trying to print to a file without using the Windows printer drivers (using the "??"). However, when I use the ?? command, it automatically converts all of my ASCII tab code ( chr(9) ) to spaces. The number of spaces varies depending on which column the print process is in at the time. Is there any way to turn off "tab conversion" or "tab expansion" or something like that? So that when I write a chr(9) to a file using a ??, the file will still show a chr(9) instead of a number of spaces?

According to FPD 2.6a help "System variable _TABS contains a character value that determines where tab stops appear in printed output. represents a tab list which is a series of comma-delimited numbers in ascending order. By default, _TABS contains the null string, which sets the _TABS spacing at eight character intervals (8,16,24,32,40, and so on)". AFAIK there is no way to disable that.
If you'are creating tab delimited file than you have three choices:
- Build cursor with all fields you need and than use COPY TO DELIMITED to copy to file
- Build a big string and than save it to file using Strtofile() function
- Use low-level functions FCREATE, FWRITE and FCLOSE

--sb--