Question re: formatting in ACE, need advice...please :-)

Bonnie, I have not spent a great deal of time looking at your problem, but two things come immediately to mind, and they're 'wierd' enough that I thought I'd share them: 1 - Ace is a 'single-pass' reporter. You can't go through the data twice. (It looks like you may be trying to). If you need to recall 'old' data then you have to store it in an array. An option to this is something I've done successfully before - write multiple ace reports. Each report will print as the first x characters (8 or so) a key indicating first the data, then the report number, then a sequence number - the output from rpt1 might look like: ABC0101 ABC0102 ABC0103 DEF0101 DEF0102 The output from rpt2 might look like: ABC0201 ABC0202 ABC0203 DEF0201 DEF0202 Then you merge them and sort into one large file and post-process with something like awk (insert your favourite tool here). 2 - It is quite feasible to write an ace report which writes the source to another ace report. A controlling shell then compiles the second ace report and runs it. The sacego compiler is fairly quick - so the report doesn't take a great deal longer than it would have anyway. This was you get around hard coded variables (like filename). j. _____________________________________________________________________________ Jack Parker | Hewlett Packard, BSMC Boise, Idaho, USA| Runaway 18-wheeler on the jparker@hpbs3645.boi.hp.com | Information Superhighway _____________________________________________________________________________ Any opinions expressed herein are my own and not those of my employers. _____________________________________________________________________________