Hi Bruce ---

>Also, I might guess that a lot of Replaces/Substrs like that would take longer on a large file...

Surprisingly, no. In the example I posted, I used APPEND and REPLACE just to "dumb down" the code...I hate masking the concept with overly complex example code. Generally, in the real world, I use INSERT INTO () VALUES (). The advantage to using low-level file interaction is that you can validate the data and structure of the file. Anyway, usually you have to massage the data into final form anyway, and not just do a direct import so it boils down to 1/2 dozen of one or 6 of the other.