In article <199606040757.AAA22829@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com>, Karsten Self <kmself@IX.NETCOM.COM> says: > >Any other 'regular' flatfile types people have encountered?

Here's one I ran into around 18 years ago. The data came to me on punch cards, but was then to be mapped out to a file of 1000 byte records:

001 23 1 452 9 453 2 ... 001 454 3 501 4 .... 001 523 6 524 9 578 2 ... 001 892 3 999 2 1000 3 002 1 1 154 3 890 4 003 54 4 198 7

The first 3 columns were ID numbers to define a set of data. Begining in column 4 was the byte number to map the number immediately following to. For example, on the first line, at column 23 put a 1, at column 452 put a 9, at column 453 put a 2. Etc.

It was a major pain (which I didn't run into often), but even then, in the dark ages, SAS76 could do it.