thanks for the clarification thomas. that is in fact what i had tried however
vfp underlines the sentence (ie syntax wrong)

for lnRun to alines(laLines, FileToStr("c:\mydir\m.txt"))

is there an alternative?

thanks
k

>

lcErg = ""
>for lnRun to alines(laLines, FileToStr("c:\mydir\m.txt"))
>    If !Empty(laLines[m.lnRun])
>       lcErg = m.lcErg + laLines[m.lnRun]
>    endif
>next
>= StrToFile(m.lcErg, "c:\mydir\m_Clean.txt")

>
>Overwriting with the same name might get you into other troubles,
>so I prefer to keep original file unchanged.
>
>HTH
>
>thomas