That's usually what I do. I write code to read the file and extract what I want/need and save it to a custom binary file.

Then I write the program that uses the data. Makes loading the data much faster, and makes the whole process go much faster.

I guess that's why it was hard for me to see the problem, because you are doing what I always do. I just took it for granted that that was what's ALWAYS done.

Brian