perl seeker:

Oh, I see what you're asking now. For a delimited file, you usually don't leave out the delimiters. In other words, I wouldn't expect to see this:

Rather, I would expect to see (notice the extra !):

In this version, you get the correct number of fields, with a blank cheque number. If the format is under your control, I'd suggest always having the correct number of delimiters. Otherwise you won't be able to reliably tell the difference between the fields--how would you determine it was the cheque number that was missing rather than the receipt number?

...roboticus