The following will parse a comma separated string with quotes into an array -

lcStr = ["one","two","three","four"]
lnitems = ALINES(laItems, CHRTRAN(CHRTRAN(lcstr, ["], ""), ",", CHR(13)))

HTH

Dan

>I need to read a comma seperated text file with quotes around strings.
>Each record has 1500 fields. Since VFW tables can have only 255 fields I
>need to read this file I quess byte by byte into an array, then assign to
>different tables the data I need. Could someone explain to me the best way
>to do this. I did it by useing FileToStr and then did a substr loop to read
>each character and pharsed the filethat way. It took forever to complete the
>process. The average file is about 500k. Thank you in advance for any help.
>I am starting a very data intensive project that will proably take over a year
>todo. I can do this easlie in VB. But don't know the best way in VFW.
>
>Thanks
>John Marrone
>Bloodstock Research Inc.
>jmarrone@brisnet.com