>>Does anybdy know where I can get the "Offical" definition of delimited ascii files?
>>
>>We are working with another one of our divisions and the guys there keep sending us comma delimited files. Normally this is OK, but in this case, some of the fields have double quotes in the data and it messes up the data when we APPEND FROM TYPE DELIMITED.
>>
>>They are downloading this data from a mainframe into an ascii file for us.
>>
>>We would like them to send us an SDF file, but they claim that this is a "Standard Delimited File".
>>
>>Is there any site that has definition of what the different delimited files types are?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Jerry Tovar
>
>Your mainframe collegues should probably use (or be forced to use) their good sense to figure out that delimiter character should be a character which never be met in data itself.
>SDF stands for "System Data Format" and you can print it out of MS VFP on-line Help.

We've found pipes | with no commas work well in the past. | isn't in general usage (surely?!). Then you have to write a natty routine to split out the data. I don't think fox will handle it too well.
- Sarah