My Cobol program does a serial read thru a master (either an auto or manual) COPY DBGET OF DBMACROP. %DBGET(WS-BN-ACCESS-PATH-1# ,WS-BN-SET-NAME# ,I-MOD2# ,I-STAT# ,I-ALLI# ,WS-DB-BUFFER-1# ,I-PASS#) END-CALL. I already know the offset and length of the key item from a previous call to DBINFO mode 102 outside of the DBGET mode 2 loop. If the key item is defined as an "X", "U" or "Z" type I have no problem extracting the data value from the buffer WS-DB-BUFFER-1. Works great on alpha type keys. Different animal when I am working on masters whose key items are either COMP or PACKED items. My problem is on a manual master when the key item is not the first item in the data set. My difficulty is trying to get the data value of the COMP key item. I have tried MOVEing WS-DB-BUFFER-1 (DBINFO102-OFFSET:DBINFO102:LENGTH) to different types of fields in working-storage (X:length, N:length etc etc) but can't seem to get the data values loaded correctly into a stand alone working-storage COMP field. I cannot assume I know the layout of the data set structure. Any help would be appreciated from anyone who has BTDT.... TIA, Brian Donaldson. * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *