On May 30, 2:36 pm, jim <j...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> I have a tab-delimited text file (.dat file) created via sql server that I'm
> attempting to parse in visual basic 6.0. I have tried Random, Sequential and
> Binary file access. All to no avail. Finally, I had to parse the file by
> retrieving the position of each tab in the file. That is, read a line and
> w/in that line get the tab position of each tab to break up each column or
> field.
>
> I wondering if text file is the issue because parsing this same text file w/
> another programming language had the same result.
>
> any help is appreciated.
>
> jim

"Orwell" wrote:

> On May 30, 2:36 pm, jim <j...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> > I have a tab-delimited text file (.dat file) created via sql server that I'm
> > attempting to parse in visual basic 6.0. I have tried Random, Sequential and
> > Binary file access. All to no avail. Finally, I had to parse the file by
> > retrieving the position of each tab in the file. That is, read a line and
> > w/in that line get the tab position of each tab to break up each column or
> > field.
> >
> > I wondering if text file is the issue because parsing this same text file w/
> > another programming language had the same result.
> >
> > any help is appreciated.
> >
> > jim
>
> Check the "type" of file. Sometimes, SQL Server generates a UNICODE
> file that makes programs not recognize the delimiters. Open the file
> in Notepad, so a "Save As..." and see what the "Encoding" is. If it's
> "Unicode," change it to "ANSI", save the file, and try the parsing
> again.
>