I'm trying to discover the possible cause for an oddity when using the 
'offset' parameter as 
in the 'substr' funtion in the small script below. This sample exercise is 
a miniaturization
 of the same phenomenon which I noticed when creating a much larger 
'series' item by reading
 fixed-length records from a file one at a time and valuing 
some variables with pieces of those records. 

The notes at the right of the 2nd (uncommented) 'for' loop below indicate 
that I get the 
same results and values in the 'print' results when using 'different' 
starting positions 
in the series call to 'substr' which uses 'starting position' and 'length' 
as its parameters. 

The commented 'for' loop which appears first delivers the correct 
results.....but I really need
 to understand why the 2nd loop can use different position 'starting 
values' in the call .......
and output the same results.....it doesn't seem 'right and proper'. 

(There are (3) instances of a simulated record in the variable 'sample', 
each is (38) characters long).

Thanks............ John D.

******************************************************************** 

Rebol[Title: "Sort dsysmst.txt to name sequence"] 

substr: func [record offset len] [ 
   copy/part at record offset len 
] 

sample: "0015342HORNBECK       EDNA           A0024667BADGER DONALD  
R0035457ECONOMOU       THOMAS         S" 

;In this for loop ....all results are as expected

;for i 1 114 38 [ 
; 
; recnbr: substr sample i + 0 3 
; regnbr: substr sample i + 3 4 
; lname: substr  sample i + 7 15 
; fname: substr  sample i + 22 15 
; minit: substr  sample i + 37 1 
; print [recnbr regnbr lname fname minit] 
; 
;] 

;In the for loop below ......

; zero or 1 offset gives same result 
; 3 or 4 offset does NOT give same result 
; 7 or 8 offset does NOT give same result 
; 22 or 23 offset gives same result 
; 37 or 38 offset does NOT give same result 

for i 1 114 38 [ 

        rec1: substr sample i 38 
        recnbr: substr rec1 0 3 
        regnbr: substr rec1 4 4 
        lname: substr  rec1 8 15 
        fname: substr  rec1 22 15 
        minit: substr  rec1 38 1 

        print [recnbr regnbr lname fname minit] 
 
] 
 
halt 

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