I would like to pack some large tables to free up disk space. Is there a better way than the following? This seems kind of cumbersome.
1) cpdbf TABLEA to TABLEB
2) drop TABLEA
3) Physically rename TABLEB.tbl and TABLEB.blb to TABLEA.tbl and TABLEA.blb
4) Addtable TABLEA back into database and reindex.
I assume you mean copydbf not cpdbf.
Another way would be to use sql "create tableb as select * from tablea". But then your compact table is a new name which may be problematic for existing scripts. So you'd then have to do the rename/drop/add/reindex trick as above. So, not really a better way.
One followup -- when I create table as select from, blob fields show up as varblobi in SYSTABLES. The original said BLOB. Is it the same thing or will it behave differently?