Can't tell you why the extra characters are there, maybe something in the way you exported from OO? Some editors will show you the special characters and let you delete them directly. If that doesn't work for you I can think of a couple of things. Use "tr" to change those characters to something like spaces, then fix it manually. Use "dd" to write out everything but the first three characters to a new file. "sed" might work to delete them, but I'm not a sed expert so I can't be sure. --- Craig White wrote: > I have a text file which I exported in tab delimited format from > Filemaker Pro on Windows, cleaned up in openoffice.org and want to > import into postgres. > > the first few characters in the file are killing me and I haven't a clue > on how to rid the file of them... > > 0000000 357 273 277 1 \t B l o o d B o r n e > > it's the 357 273 277 that don't belong...the data should start with "1" > > where did they come from and how do I get rid of them? > > Craig > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change you mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss