Creating Tab Delimited text file

General
1

Anyone has any idea how to create a tab delimited file??

i know how to create csv file. i simply create a query with the information i need and then looping through the query and add in " and , for CSV file.

2

Simply use a CHR(9), tab character, instead of the comma to separate the fields when writing to the file.

3

Do i need to have " for the values??? what about a field with multiple line and carriage return

4

If your data is in an array, use join to create each line:

dim aLine as string = join( lineDataArr, Chr( 9 ) )

But if you have fields that may contain EOL characters or even tabs, a tab-delimited format might not be the best choice for you. It depends on why you want to create this file, and where it will be used.

5

i don’t think the data will have tab but definitely carriage return like paragraph in biography of an artist.

Is EOL the same as carriage return or line feed?

6

Yes, EOL can be a return, linefeed, or a return-linefeed combination (Windows).

What will you (or your users) be doing with this file once it’s created?

7

my idea is probably replace the CRLF with “
” and get the user to open the text file and replace “
” with CRLF in Excel.

8

I just checked, and Excel already has a means of doing this. Surround each field with double-quotes and the EOL characters won’t matter. If the field already has double-quotes in it, double them up (just like when you do it in a Xojo string). So if your field is:

this"a"
that

What you can store is:

"this""a""
that"

Excel will properly translate that.

9

[quote=25279:@Richard Duke]Anyone has any idea how to create a tab delimited file??

i know how to create csv file. i simply create a query with the information i need and then looping through the query and add in " and , for CSV file.[/quote]

Actually that’s kind of true - but not really
You need to handle quotes in field values specially & also newlines if you have them

10

Kem, do i need to put double quote on integer, date or double value then?

11

I think you can mix quoted and unquoted fields.