>>Thanks Hilmar,
>>I am familiar with basic delimited text imports but this file format
>>is kind of tricky. It is '~','*', and '<' delimited and does
>>all sorts of multiple loops throughout. Each record has a unique identifier
>>which is a 2 or 3 letter code so I was planning on using
>>those codes to perform all the functions. not sure if I am going to do
>>all the coversion from the file itself or import to cursor and perform
>>functions from their..we'll see.
>>
>>thanks again...
>>Ronnie
>
>Let's say each record is on a separate line, in a text file.
>
>Read each line.
>
>Use at() to search for a specific delimiter. Save the position to a variable.
>
>Read all characters up to the delimiter. Copy remaining line back to current line.
>
>Example:
>
>

>lnPosition = at("~", lcCurrentLine)
>replace Field1 with left(lcCurrentLine,lnPosition - 1)
>lcCurrentLine = substr(lcCurrentLine, lnPosition + 1)
>

>
>To actually get the file into memory, use FileToStr(). To separate into lines, use alines().
>
>HTH, Hilmar.

This is very similar to what we did in converting ANSI 4010 format to a VFP database. We are going through the same drill for ANSI x12 837 for building Electronic Medical Claims records, recognizing Remittance records and building other special record sets used in the medical community. This time around, however we are going to build the parsing routines and interpretation database of segment values and calculation routines related to them into a COM object so that it can be called from any number of medical information systems for submission to a variety of payors and clearinghouses as many of them look at the information in a little different manner.

Good luck with your project.

Bill