>No, actually I mean it generically. It's a whole sack-load of methods, in a form, using low-level file handling - FGETS() etc., to read in a complicated and complex structured text file of bus-system records, with many and changing formats. So that wouldn't work, thanks.
>
>Terry
>
>>When you say "import" you mean append from delimited, right?
>>
>>Instead of addressing the issue in transit, append to a scratch dbf and then address the issue after the import has completed!

Terry,
As per being strange it was not at all and you already got plenty of explanations.
Tilde usage is an indirect 'set exact' implementation. Adding tilde to both sides you introduce a word boundary so if they match they should match up to and including tilde:
"137~" = "1~"
would be false for example.

Anyway I jumped in to say that Terry's < bg > suggestion is what I had in mind as a solution to your problem. IMHO it's easier and faster to manipulate an intermediate cursor than using fgets() series (at least what I do in my generic importer class).
Cetin