Okay, I'm trying to set up an MFD of a file that is not comma delimited, or tab delimited, however each field is sequentially next to the other, in fact, they are probably space delimited, but if I were to ignore this fact, is there a format I can use (like SUFFIX=...) that will treat each consecutive non blank as a new variable for a column value? Any suggestions will help so much on this one.

Thanks!

SUFFIX=FIX
read a flat file where columns begin and end in known,constant locations.
If that doesn't work for you, and you do indeed have a variable width record with a space between columns, then try SUFFIX=DFIX
and DELIMITER/A1=' '; in the mfd

So, are you saying that if I have delimited data, (i.e. tab delimited), I don't need a MFD with a single field and use the GETTOK function to extract the individual fields?

How long has this been around?

Thanks.

2001 at least version 5.1

2001? Well I guess I need to start paying better attention to New Features.

Thanks

That's correct, the only thing is that when you define the MFD for comma delimited file, in the reporting program itself, you have to put "PCOMMA=ON " right before you retrieve data from the file. Otherwise you'll get an error and some gibberish from the file. And of course, using this method, you can define each field on the MFD and access them individually in the report merely by field name.