Thank you, Michael. I had one of these progs or maybe both, in a previous hard drive. Gramps and Lifelines output nice records of various kinds. Although a gedcom is not what this corrupted text file is, exactly. It has the same format, but a gedcom pertains only to that set of individuals who is somehow related to the person at the head of the gedcom. My database has many family groups who are entirely unrelated to any specific single individual.

I could produce a gedcom from this file (have, etc), but this requires selecting an individual who is the starting point for either descendants of the person, or ancestors of them. But since I think I know the surname of the family I was working on at the time of the fryolation, maybe I can get the prog to make a gedcom from them. If so, this sounds like it might work.

I'll check and see if one or the other of these progs includes a file-validator.

Thank you for the idea.