array help needed

[Walter Vaughan]

We've been using the IMPORT facility to read in a text file that
has 3 different types of records

I'd really like to change that so we read in something from
the environment, and I was hoping arrays could be used,
something along the lines of how the import fields are used.

For example if the input (tildes between fields) is
"1~~AB~12~A~" (actually nearly a hundred fields),
Is there some reasonable bit of code that would emulate
IMPORT stuf (xx) f=~ r=\n
that would look at stuf(4) and show it as "12" using arrays?

I want to import via @pm fields and get the same functionality
so we don't have to rewrite a ton of fragile code.

--
Walter