Hello Steven Read and Bryan Smith
I thank you both for thinking with me in trials on the clipper road.
Your remarks
 SR> Wrong way to use a database.  Instead of attempting to split up a
 SR> field by using low ASCII markers, why not use seperate fields like
 SR> a database is designed too?
 SR> Use fields like
 SR>   LN            FN          MN           TITLE
 SR>   __________________________________________--
 SR>   Johnson       Jane                     Mrs.
 SR>   Johnson       John        Henry        Mr.
 SR> Am I reading you right?  What is wrong with this method?  Is disk file
 SR> space an issue? :-)
are certainly right. Space on the hard disk urges me to put different entries 
in one field. I gave you an example with names, but I also want to use this 
method with other data. In a table I am working with I have data that are 
split up in one to five strings of 1 to 35 characters, but the total length 
of the five strings together is never more than 35 characters. If I would 
make five different fields of 35 characters each that would make my table 
four times as big as necessary (with 80 - 90% empty space!!!). When you have 
not one but more of these kind of data, it makes a megabyte sized table into 
a gigabyte one. That is why I want to put entries that we usualy would put in 
different fields into one field. And I want to use low ascii's because they 
are not on the keyboard, so the person who is using my program cann't make 
mistakes.
But I don't know what I had done wrong when testing this method. When I 
repeated my testprogram this day with the line
                 replace Alias->Field with chr(001)
       or        Alias->Field := chr(001)
in it, it gave a beautiful smiley in my table. And so it went with almost all 
the low ascii's.
I thank you both for thinking with me in my problems on the clipper road.
Greetings
   Joop Buker  (Holland)
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