Hello All:
I am looking for better solution for this problem.
Problem:
I am using the append from to import data from a fixed length ascii file. However, the length of each line is different. The shortest line will contain 1109 characters. The longest line is unknown.

My solution:
I created a cursor for fields between position 1 to 1109 plus a memo field for data beyon position 1109. Use APPEND FROM MYTEXTFILE.DAT TYPE SDF to append data from the ascii file. After that I will evaluate the memo field from each record. Because I know that if there is data in the memo field, each field is 12 character long. I can substr to sperate each field and use alter table to add the extra field(s) to the cursor.

PROBLEM:
the APPEND FROM command did not work for the memo field. Could anyone tell me what did I do wrong ?
thanks
sherry