How to Strip Quotation Marks from an ASCII Delimited Text File (143245)

SUMMARY

Typical methods of generating ASCII text files place double quotation marks around character fields. Sometimes these quotation marks aren't wanted. This article presents a way to remove the quotation marks programmatically. If there are double quotation marks embedded in the data itself, however, this method cannot be used.

MORE INFORMATION

To remove quotation marks from an ASCII text file programmatically, you must first place the file in a memo field. Then the STRTRAN() function can be used to replace each instance of double quotations with a blank space. The corrected contents of the memo field can then be copied to an ASCII text file.

To demonstrate this technique, type and run the following program named Myprog.prg.

  * myprog.prg
   SET SAFETY OFF

   * Create a table named "mymemo" with one memo field named "notes"
   * Append a blank record to the table
   CREATE TABLE mymemo ( notes M(10))
   APPEND BLANK

   IF !USED("mymemo")
        USE mymemo IN 0
   ENDIF

   IF !USED("customer")
        USE customer IN 0
   ENDIF

   * copy the company and CONTACT fields to an ASCII tab-delimited text
   * file
   SELECT CUSTOMER
   COPY TO mytext.txt FIELDS company, contact TYPE DELIMITED WITH TAB

   * Place the ASCII file, Mytext.txt, into the memo field notes in the
   * mymemo table
   SELECT mymemo
   APPEND MEMO mymemo.notes FROM mytext.txt OVERWRITE

   * Replace each instance of  double quotes with a blank
   REPLACE notes WITH STRTRAN(notes,'"',"")

   * Copy the corrected quoteless text back into another ASCII text file
   COPY MEMO notes TO quoteles.txt

   * Close tables
   USE
   SELECT customer
   USE
   * end program

Using any text editor, open Mytext.txt and observe the double quotation marks around the character fields. Then open Quoteles.txt to confirm that the quotation marks have been removed.