How to Strip Quotation Marks from an ASCII Delimited Text File

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.