>Yes, you are right. These files do have a header, but not in the sense that we think of a xBase header file. I have been able to order the lines into columns that are vertically aligned, and I assign an artificial column name when writing out to a vfp table.
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>However, the Basic language must have a certain ASC code that signifies (flags) the data type. That is where my attempts fall apart. Every column is an ASC string. When the string is cryptic ASC characters, I don't know what was intended or even the value. I am looking for something that correctly recognizes the ASC flag that Basic uses to signal Integer and whatever else data typing it allows.

A .dat extension only says that the file 'might be' a data file. Header might be a 'known format' one (such as resolved by Btrieve which basic coders used a lot in past) or anyhting 'invented' by the coder.

Integers, reals, long on memory is stored as a sequence of ASCII chars and many tools/languages save them on disk same way (there was a very long discussion about this recently - naming dword to num). To basic an integer was 2 bytes and a long was 4 bytes. If it used 4 bytes you might simply try converting that column's datatype to int (VFP holds integers as 4 bytes as they're represented in memory) - and you might need to do this header changing in VFP lowlevel.

I'd first try getting Btrieve searching internet (forgot addresses).

If you knew what would a few lines (records) would be you might reverse engineer the structure.

Cetin