ml> why space padding? the strings are null terminated... no padding 
 ml> needed...

 BP> how can i know ?

are you not a "hacker" in the old school sense of the phrase?
simple look at the existing and you will see one of two basic formats and
possibly one that incorporates both... the most obvious format is the null
terminated which doesn't care about string length other than seeking to the
first nul character in the field... that C style... pascal style carries a
string length byte at the beginning of the string chatacter array ;)

)\ /(ark