I greatly appreciate your response. But speed is kind of important, and I have found a single-pass solution (courtesy of this forum but I cannot locate the person's name to give him credit).

It is as follows:
lparameters t_cTablename

use (t_cTablename)
handle=fcreate("dumped.txt")
scan
=fputs(handle,dumprecord())
endscan
=fclose(handle)

function dumprecord
thisline = ""
for ix = 1 to fcount()
do case
case type(field(ix))$"CM"
newline = alltrim(eval(field(ix)))
case type(field(ix))$"NFYB"
newline = alltrim(str(eval(field(ix))))
case type(field(ix))$"L"
newline = iif(eval(field(ix)),"True","False")
case type(field(ix))="D"
newline = dtoc(eval(field(ix)))
case type(field(ix))="T"
newline = ttoc(eval(field(ix)))
otherwise
newline = ""
endcase
thisline=thisline+"~"+newline
endfor
return thisline

Again, many thanks!


>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?