I'd tried tr but was foiled because the file does have carriage returns at the end. I couldn't get dd to do what I wanted either in the short amount of time I spent trying.

It was easy to identify the records that were 'bad', and since there were only 64 of them, and people were jumping up and down, I just got the line numbers of the bad records and fixed it in vi. Very low-tech, I know.

Proof of the pudding should follow in a few minutes when the job in question re-cycles.

I've saved off your scripts for next time this happens - and for my own learning.

Thanks again all - as an old tv show used to (almost) say: 'The nature of ziwt was irrepressible!' :)


edit: Can't even spell ziwt. Shoot me now...