>Scot, if you zip up and send to me one of those files ...

He did. The problem was not really an FGets bug, but that the file was being FOpened with access mode 12 (read/write unbuffered). I tried it that way and it sure bombed the program. But opening the disk file with buffered access modes worked fine:

0 (Default) Read Only Buffered
1 Write-Only Buffered
2 Read and Write Buffered
10 Read-Only Unbuffered
11 Write-Only Unbuffered
12 Read and Write Unbuffered

Is there an advantage to using modes 10-12 on disk files?