<< And then use SPUT to place the various data items in their required position. The last piece written is a “P” at position 500. Positions 501 – 512 should be blanks, as created by the SFIL above, but instead are being stripped off. Any idea why? >> Whenever a text expression is evaluated, R:Base implicitly removes trailing space characters. 99% of the time this is what you want, and the fact that R:Base takes care of it for you it a big help. The remaining 1% of the time, however. . .
I suggest you build your "holding" expression as (SFIL(CHAR(32), 512) + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10)) With the CRLF on the end of the line, R:Base will not strip it (at least, I don't THINK it will). Now, after you've used SPUT to create the record use: WRITE .vLine CONTINUE to write it to your file. The CONTINUE tells R:Base NOT to add the lineend characters itself (otherwise you'd wind up with blank lines between every two lines in your file). -- Larry
