>>If I do [SELECT ALLTRIM(STR(number)) TO FILE ascii.txt] I get leading blanks in the output for records where the length of the data is less than the maximum length. I need output data with no leading or trailing blanks. Any ideas?
>>
>>Bob
>
>SELECT ALLTRIM(STR(number)) as dummy from table1 into cursor tmp nofilter
>copy to ascii.txt type ....

Bob (via Ed)

Be very careful with a SQL-SELECT field of variable length. They default to the length of the FIRST record, so some data may be truncated. I ran into this with an ALLTRIM(name). The system worked fine on my test data (first name 'Christophersen') and failed on the live data (first name 'NG') :-)

Barbara