I want to read a data file of this format: apple 1 2 3 4 5 pear 6 7 8 9 0 I want to be able to read the first column as a string, and the rest of it as numbers. The problem I have is that IDL automatically reads the entire line when you tell it to read a string. So when I try to make it read "apple" it actually reads "apple 1 2 3 4 5". I found a routine called "strmid" which can extract part of a strong. So this will let me extract "apple" from "apple 1 2 3 4 5". But the problem is that I still need to read the numbers after I do that. So in order to read both the numbers and the string, I either need to make the string stop reading before the end of the line, or I need to be able to make it start reading after a certain number of characters so that it can skip the string. It would also be helpful if I could read one character at a time. I haven't figured out how to do either of these things yet. To be honest I am rather annoyed at IDL. I've been using it for months and my opinion of it has not improved at all in that time. IDL does everything with routines, so that I need to google the syntax for every task I need to do, no matter how mundane. In contrast, if I were working in C++, then I would not need to use any routine for "strmid", I would just define a character vector, and then I'd be able to draw the characters I needed out of it directly using the indices. I have never needed to do this task in C before, but I didn't have to google new syntax to figure out how to do it, because C does not rely so heavily on routines like IDL. Fortran would also be a mess to try to read one character at at time, but reading columns in Fortran is trivial, whereas this simple task still gives me headaches in IDL. Also I occasionally run into situations where IDL seems unable to do a trivial task, like reading a string and then a number.