Subject Re: STUFF() returns incorrect character From Gaetano <gaetanodd@hotmail.com> Date Sun, 3 Jan 2021 17:00:46 +1000 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started A Akshat metioned, a few more details would help to understand what is going on. A few questions form my side: 1. why use low level functions instead of the file object? 2. from the command line, you only do one line at a time while in the PRG you would be looping presumably. If AT() doesn't find the character, it returns 0, how does your code code handle that? Here is what I use to replace characters. If you want to use read() instead of gets(), just replace gets() with read(), but don't read more than 2000 characters at a time, stuff's performacne deteriorates rapidly with bigger strings : fIn = new file() fInput = "whateverFile.txt" fIn.open(fInput) fOut = new file() fOutput = "whateverOutputFile.txt" fOut.create(fOutput) do while not fIn.eof()     cStr = fIn.gets()     cStr=strip(cStr,"NaN","0")     fOut.writeln(cStr) enddo fIn.close() fOut.close() function strip( cArg, cStrip ,cNew)     local cRet, nLen     cRet = cArg     nLen = len( cStrip )     do while cStrip $ cRet        cRet := stuff( cRet, at( cStrip, cRet ), nLen, cNew )     enddo         return cRet On 03/01/2021 03:53, John Gillen wrote: > Hello, > > I am using low level file functions (FOPEN(), FEOF(), FREAD(), FWRITE() and FCLOSE() to parse a text file. As part of this parsing, I am using three commands to replace characters in the incoming file: mstring = <incoming string>; mpos = AT(<where character to replace is found in the incoming string>);  mstring = STUFF(mstring,mpos,1,"") to do the character replacement. > > If I run these three steps in the Command window, it works as expected. > > If I run these three steps in a program, instead of NULL, I get a comma (,). > > I tried "",'', and NULL CHR(0) all with the same result - a comma. > > dBASE 8/Windows 10 64bit > > Any ideas/suggestions are appreciated. > > John >