>Such things crop up with one forgotten kink at moments where you are already stressed.
>
>My first action (after overcoming the programmers itch to fix myself) is to contact originator of the file and change the structure of the file if possible, bracketing ALL char fields with almost-never-used character if possible or at least get consistent handling of char fields.
>Most of the time that is enough for handling with /with character clauses of append from type delimited.

I dunno where you live or what you're on, but I'd like some of that too.

Contacting the author is practically never an option. Most of the time I don't even know where the files are coming from, or when I know, it's a legacy app (usually written in Clarion) which has the option to export everything into Excel. The worst part is that they try to be helpful by omitting the redundant columns, but often omit different columns each time.