Do you VFP 6.0? This might work:

lcText = FileToStr( lcFileName )

lcText = STRTRAN(lcText, "1999", "99")
lcText = STRTRAN(lcText, "0000", "")

StrToFile(lcText, lcFileName)

>Can anyone tell me how to do low level file manipulation in VFP? I have a file with row after row that looks something like this:
>
>01010212199909380000098463
>
>And I need to make it look like this:
>
>01010212990938098463
>
>Another tricky part is that the first line in the file is a header that's different from the rest.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Michelle