That looks like you are trying to use a Reader/Writer to work on a binary file (i.e. a MS
Word document, I don't know if Foxpro/VB reports are binary or character. Sounds like they're binary). The Reader/Writer classes in
Java are only for working on plain text files. If you pass binary data through them, they will attempt to map the data to a Unicode character set. If a particular set of bytes does not map to a Unicode character, you lose data. Have a look at the
Java tutorial on IO for more on Readers/Writers vs. Streams.
[ March 10, 2006: Message edited by: Joe Ess ]