VB and dat files

Just started to work on an assignment and decided to use dat files as my method of contact storage (rather than data bases such as access cuz I have worked with them before and wanted a change)

Well, obviously I have come up a cropper when trying to remove records. easy enough to delete the data stored within the record but the record it self stays with the string length values I assigned.

So basicaly, I just want to remove the single record, each record has 8 aspects to it.

I have posted this at a few boards as time is a factor

any help, links, code etc would be very much apprciated

(at the time of writing visualbasicforums.com was down)

Much thanx

-Ciz