I think that here, unlike a FoxPro DBF, the data files have no header information that says, what is the data type and the column name for the different columns. Therefore, I doubt that this can be automated. Probably you will have to look at the programs that created the data, look for patterns in the data, and - if possible - consult with the people who designed the system.

>Hi All
>
>I am working with a legacy MS Basic application. Yes, I thought it was a "toy" application too. But as it turns out, the application if fairly complex and some pretty good sized businesses are using it daily. As you know, Basic data is stored in flat file ASC files with an extension of ".dat". I can open the files and parse them etc using FOPEN() and FGETS() and then write out to a table.
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>However, I loose some of the information. For example an Integer value is represented as a character string that the Basic interpreter reads as an integer. When I parse the ASC string, I get something like "þþ". The BASIC application is not well documented, so figuring out all of the columns and the intended type will be very time consuming and very tedious. Did I mention that there are more than a few tables to be converted? I really don't want to be doing this for the next year.
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>My question, is whether someone knows of a utility (in any flavor of Basic, or preferably in VFP), that can convert/export/import *.dat files into anything else that has a row, column format (Access, Excel, XBase tables or??).
>
>TIA
>Don Lowrey