Subject Re: Computer serial number From Akshat Kapoor <akshat.kapoor@kapoorsons.in> Date Sat, 20 Apr 2024 17:36:47 +0530 Newsgroups dbase.getting-started Good Evening Mervyn, >> I just ran the above code and checked the file in an online hex >> editor. There were plenty of junk special characters. > > The FF and FE as the first two characters in the file are a Byte Order > Marker (BOM) and indicate that the contents of the file are encoded as > UTF-16 Little Endian i.e with the least significant bit to the right. > > Editors such as Notepad++, and even lowly old Notepad, recognise the BOM > and decode and display the file correctly.  As you are using Notepad++ > in dBASE, open the file and look at the Encoding menu. > > Unfortunately the dBASE sourcecode editor doesn't know what to do with > the BOM and gives up the moment it finds the first null. :-( I was waiting for this info. I opened the file serial.txt in notepad++ and it looked fine. I then opened it in online hex editor and everything got clear. Rest had been done before so was not an issue Regards Akshat