Jeff, Here's a plain old MPE way to do it. No Posix, no 3rd party tools. :print foo xyz1234567890abcdefghij line 2 line 3 line 4 :file fum;rec=-7,,f,ascii :echo Y >fcanswer :fcopy from=foo;to=*fum;new;subset=0,1 <fcanswer >$null :print fum xyz1234 Doug Werth Beechglen Development Inc. [log in to unmask] Cincinnati, Ohio ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sohrt, Jeff" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Friday, December 01, 2000 4:48 PM Subject: Print out 1st few bytes of a file > I call upon the esteemed gurus of the 3k-l... > > Can someone explain how to print the first few bytes of a file. All I can > think of is a Vesoft.MPEX way but given the mass of Posix stuff in > HPBIN.SYS, I was hoping for a non 3rd-party semi-elegant way of doing this. > > Basically I want a PRINT myfile;END=1 but I don't want to see the whole > record, only the first seven bytes. > > An MPE way would be to build a 7 byte file, copy in the source, then print > out the new file, but that's kind of ugly. > > I appologize if the obvious is escaping me today, go easy. > > Thanks in advance, > jds