>I have a wealth of information in .dat files that i would
>like to use in a VFP application. I do not wish to use
>low level file functions if there is a software package
>that has .dat as the native file format. Please let me
>know what that software is or failing that, what other
>software will read a .dat file. I am willing to convert from ascii to dbf but do not know how to convert a .dat file to ascii. Please help by emailing brighton@flash.net.
>Thanks in advance.

If your dat file stores information in ASCII format (you can tell by opening the file with your MODI COMM command and the information shows no high order characters, just regular letters and numbers) you can create a table that corresponds to the structure of your dat file. Each corresponding field need to be the same length. Then use the new dbf file and do an APPEND FROM datfile.DAT TYPE SDF.

If the information is in packed format you can either write it to a text file from Basic or you can get a utility like one from Monarch that can convert it into a dbf for you

Hope this helps
Larry