Heh, glad to have helped.

I know it takes a while to get your head around it, but the only way it will come is to struggle along... alas. But it will come, don't worry.

One of the most overlooked features in Delphi (IMHO) is the use of try...except blocks in data transformation. In simple terms, endeavor to do things one way. If the input doesn't match, raise an exception and catch that to try another way. Keep going until you either run out of ways to try or until the input matches.

Good luck.