Mark,
Many thanks for the detailed insight, observations and suggestions.
After hashing this out in the www.isug.com SIGs, continuing the discussion here, performing a few tests and thinking it over, I opted for the option 1. Cleaning the data before loading it. The logical option.
I kept it simple. I identified the ofending file with vi and replaced the "Control-M" characters with "".
So, I am good now. Thank you very much for your help.
Regards,
Jean-Pierre
P:S. You should have heard me laughing out loud like a madman when I remembered how to fix
this... My initial approaches where total over kill!