John,

I've been doing a little more poking on your problem. I know your're doing
VB but C++ has the abiliity manipulate file pointer in a way that VB can't.
I've been playing with some C++ code that is really fast. I created a
500,000 record / 80 character file. The time to read the last 10 records is
unmeasurable (it calculates to 0.00000000). The trick in this code is that
you can't specify a number of records from the end. You have to specify a
file offset from the end in bytes. However, it automatically syncs itself
to the first full record following the offset point you select. Now, you
can't use C++ directly but you could write a standard DLL wrapper around
the function and include it in VB with a Declare Function. You could also
create a COM wrapper around it. Would you like me to post it?

Thanks,

Jim

Jim Vita
Microsoft Developer Support

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