Haha.. good thing I added that qualifier "assuming there
is a CrLF at the end of each line." Thanks for that info --
I did not know that there are none.

However, I would offer that all is not lost. I have worked
with huge text files  that consist of a single "line". So,
perhaps Tim could modify my code frag to simply parse the
solo line -- which could be 500,000 characters long or more.
I think the same general logic would apply.

Thus, the "Line Input" statement would be moved outside of
the loop, and instead, a Mid function would be used inside
of the loop to examine said line character-by-character.

Skipping over non-printable characters is a piece of cake --
he could still use my simplistic If..EndIf branch to skip over
"junk" until he gets to the desired section of the "line".