I am attempting to create a function that will return a string from a text file, based on a user-specified delimiter such as a page-break or "|" or even "bob". As part of this process I am using UTL_FILE.GET_RAW to read a block of the file and converting it to text with UTL_I18N.RAW_TO_CHAR. The problem is, RAW_TO_CHAR converts DOS line breaks (CRLF) into Unix line breaks (LF), and I want to retain the original intact. I've done some hunting through the documentation and Google and so far I haven't seen any solutions, either to read the data for me or to convert from raw to char properly. So I have 2 questions: 1) Is there something already freely available to read a text file based on a user-specified delimiter (am I reinventing the wheel)? 2) If not, does anyone know of a way to convert raw data to text while preserving line breaks? This seems like something basic, and that I'm overlooking the obvious... --------------- Jason Heinrich Oracle Database Administrator Pensacola Christian College -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l