Bob,

use the COPY TO clauses as suggested here to create a temp version, but since you are dealing with so many records I think you'll run into memory problems trying to chrtran() the whole file at once. So do it one line at a time:

copy to temp.txt delimited ~
create table temp2 cline c(254) && might need more than 1 field is >254 char/line
append from temp.txt type sdf
set textmerge to TheRealFile.TXT
set textmerge on
scan
   \<<chrtran( cLine, ["], '' )>>
endscan
set textmerge off
set textmerge to

>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?