dbload delimiter for SE

From what I have read (documentation-wise), if I want to create a dbload command file in delimiter form for Informix SE, I am restricted to a single character, e.g. FILE input.file DELIMITER " " 6; INSERT INTO... will consider single blanks in the file "input.file" as delimiters, but if I have more than one consecutive blank, each pair of blanks defines a NULL column which is NOT what I want! So this would work as an input line in "input.file": inputDat1 inputDat2 inputDat3... but this would not: inputDat1 inputDat2 inputDat3... Why is SE's DELIMITER parameter so inflexible compared to C file i/o which easily handles multiple blank delimiters? Rich Parker Hotchkis & Wiley (Los Angeles) hotch@netcom.com