How this address the question of your original post?

Quote: If the string being searched begins with the delimiter, and you are requesting the first word, the function will return the Second word in the list.

>Yes, this may be better then ALINES solution
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>>The behavior you describe is the designed behavior -- not what I wanted either. In the case of a delimited string such as
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>>lcString = "test1|test2||test4"
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>>I would want the third word to be empty; however, GETWORDNUM() returns test4 as the third word and GETWORDNUM() returns 3, instead of 4. If you do a string translation first and insert a space in a null place:
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>>lcString = "test1|test2||test4"
>>DO WHILE ATC("||", lcString) > 0
>>   lcString = STRTRAN(lcString, "||", , "| |")
>>ENDDO
>>lcThird = GETWORDNUM(lcString, 3, "|")
>>

>>
>>Now you will get the results that you expect.