>>>I am trying to import data from a .dat file. I've got the data and am having only one problem.
>>>There is a compression character evidently on a numeric field i.e. 38.50 is 385}
>>>
>>>I guess I need to know what characters represent 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,and 9. Can anyone help me?
>>
>>Look up "Hollerith" see if that's it. Those characters might be for negatives.
>
>The "trailing sign overpunch" format? It's been decades since I last heard of that.


Yes. When I worked on a government contract in late 90s, early 2000s, we used that system for data processed out of COBOL-based mainframe accounting systems written back in the day. It came in three-entry-per-line formats with a right-most single digit identifying the type of data line. Typically a header record indicated how many detail lines to expect. But, there were still errors decades later. :-)

Most exciting to decode a system like that in VFP which was never really designed to handle multi-record formats in a single table.