Thanks to you, mike & Dan, I've taken the aggregate advice and put together a solution: thus is...
select account, padr(alltr(location),15,"+") as location,barcode FROM c:\scanned into cursor newcursor
COPY TO output2.txt DELIMITED WITH ""
=strtofile(chrtran(filetostr('e:output2.txt'),"+"," "),'e:output.txt')

and so I have a text file with a field that has trailing blanks, which said blanks needed for another application.




>- get the string from the file
>- replace spaces with "+" in the string
>- write file from the string.
>
>Sure replacing spaces with "+" may not work as you wish if there are spaces between words in the field.
>In this case you need to get the line from each record one by one, format the string as needed and write it to the file.
>
>>not sure how to interpret exactly your suggestion,can you illucidate a bit further? thanks
>>
>>>I would use this:
>>>
>>>copy ... to (filename)....
>>>
>>>=strtofile(chrtran(filetostr(filename)," ","+"),filename)
>>>
>>>>That was the one I didn't try, I was almost out of choices!
>>>>PS, what if I wanted output to look like:
>>>>811AD,SUDBURY++++++++,B021193
>>>>note the '+' being spaces.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Try:
>>>>>COPY .. to .. delim with ""
>>>>>
>>>>>>I have the below data in a table acct(5), location(15),label(5)and I want to create the txt file shown below. Do I use copy to output type sdf, delimited, delimited with ",", not having too much luck creating what I want.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>"output.txt" =
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B021193
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B020910
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B022401
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B023021
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B023207
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024342
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024341
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024382
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024351
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B024352
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B020809
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B021653
>>>>>>811AD,SUDBURY ,B023958