You need a space between LINE INPUT and #. Thanks. That solved it, and I'd never have guessed it with CLOSE#handle% and PRINT#handle% being accepted without the space ! FB isn't a huge social push like some OSS nerd-havens, but feel free to translate headers for libraries, report bugs, and post on ...

I'm a total newbie with FreeBASIC but an experienced software engineer. Having downloaded FB I must say I am mightily impressed, and not sure how I came to overlook its presence in the past ! I come from an MS-DOS TurboBasic/PowerBasic background rather than QBasic/QuickBasic, which I continue to us...