thanks this is something naomi had referred me too as well. i was trying to trim down data that it was supplying actually - more information than i need. So i have found a happy medium editing that program down and adding instead of astackinfo(), rather sys16() so:

STORE 1 TO gnX
DO WHILE LEN(SYS(16,gnX)) != 0
? SYS(16,gnX)
STORE gnX+1 TO gnX
ENDDO

***then to find the error line.

PARAMETERS gnBadLine
? 'Error occurred at line: ' + ALLTRIM(STR(gnBadLine))


k