Up to 255 characters may be inserted at the beginning and the end of a document.  These strings may be entered by keyboard or clipboard as normal characters or as ASCII character codes.  CRs may be typed directly.

A/S interprets embedded ASCII codes and, if the current character remapping set remaps outgoing characters, it remaps the characters as needed.

BOF and EOF Insert Strings can be inserted into the text as it is read from the input file or they can be sent directly to the output file.  When the string is sent directly to the output file, A/S interprets any embedded ASCII character codes and, if the current character remapping set remaps outgoing characters, it remaps the characters as needed and sends the string to the output file.  No other processing is done.

When the BOF or EOF string is inserted into the input text stream, A/S interprets any embedded ASCII character codes and then simply inserts the string into the input text as it is read from the input file.  The text is subjected to the same processing as the rest of the input file.

Sometimes it is necessary to insert more than 255 characters at the beginning or the end of a document.  A clever way to do this is to insert several unique codes (character sequences that don’t occur in the processed files) as the BOF or EOF strings making sure to choose the Add to Input Text checkbox and use several corresponding replacement strings to expand these codes to the desired values.  The key to this technique is to use unique values for the inserted codes and to allow for the effects of other replacement sets and other chosen processing options.

If a merge file is created, the BOF and EOF strings are inserted once at the beginning and at the end of the merge file.

A check mark is placed before the BOF Insert String… and EOF Insert String… menu items when a File Insert String is defined for that item.  Choose these menu items to edit the respective strings.