>if has been a while but I am sure that fread() will leave the file pointer ready to get the next xx bytes. The only problem is fread() will stop at the first carriage return and ignore the number of bytes. The docs did not say if fgets() will leave the file pointer at the correct place my I would not be surprised if it didn't. So if that is the case then you will be able to get rid of all the fseek() calls.

I think you got it switched around. fRead() doesn't stop at a CR, fGets() does.

For stuff like this, I'd usually read a decent chunk of the file, 16K or 32K, process it until the last delimiter, then chop there and add the next read chunk to the remainder of the first one. The speed gain over reading it byte by byte was about tenfold (ten years ago - with today's Windows it may be different).

But if it's only to split into lines at tildes, my money's on Tore's solution. Cause that's what I'd do (or maybe have done already, can't remember).