FoxPro TextMerge

You can use the Copy To command to create a simple text file from a table with various forms of delimiter between fields. The TextMerge commands let you create a more complex text file. The contents can be a mixture of plain text, fields and variables, and FoxPro functions.

The commands are:

Set Textmerge On

Tell Fox to evaluate anything it sees between << and >>. These delimiters can be changed with the Set Delimiters To command.

Set Textmerge To <filename> Noshow

Direct the output to a file. The file will be created if it does not already exist. If the file does exist and Safety is On then you will be asked whether you want to overwrite it. The Noshow clause suppresses output to the screen.

\xyz

Send the characters 'xyz' to the file preceded by a CR LF combination. There is no need for quotes around the characters. If you put quotes around the characters then the quotes will be output as well.

\\xyz

Send the characters 'xyz' to the file on the current line.

<<foxpro expression>>

Evaluate the FoxPro expression. The expression can be the name of a field or memory variable or a FoxPro function. The example below shows how you can mix <<foxpro expression>> with plain text on the same line.

Set TextMerge To

Close the output file.

Set Textmerge Off

Stop evaluating expressions within << and >>.

Text Merge Example

This example produces an HTML page holding a simple list of customers:

This short program will produce a text file named 'customer.htm' which looks like this in a browser:

This is a very simple page and the mixture of TextMerge and HTML can be confusing to write because both use the < and > symbols. It is however a very powerful and flexible technique which lets you build a page which will display a mixture of text and data.

Visual FoxPro offers other ways of generating HTML. These are described on the HTML from FoxPro page.

Gotcha

There are two things to watch out for when using text merge and a third when using it to produce HTML:

• Everything on the line after a \ or \\, including any trailing spaces, will be output.
• The carriage return/linefeed comes before the characters are output.
• Remember that a \\ produces a new line of output in the text of the HTML file. It will not produce a new line on the web page. You never really need to use a \\ when generating HTML because browsers ignore new lines in the HTML source.