darn...just tried reformat/sreformat with the "o"-option... but it is
broke on 7.5.0.NT

this is supposed to overlay any duplicate item's attribute's value with
the current value rather than APPENDING it as an additional value.

assuming you start with an empty target-file, this should leave a
maximum of only one value per attribute in the final target-file.

well, you do get only *one* value... but it is the same identical value
for ALL ITEMS in the file!

eg. given the following data sets:

source_file:
id1^smith^john
id2^smith^mary
id3^jones^fred

target_file:
<initially empty>
--------------------
running the following:

incorrectly results in:

target_file:
smith^john
jones^john

------------------------------------------------
instead of correctly resulting in:

target_file:
smith^mary
jones^fred


note: without the "o"-option, it correctly returns:
target_file:
smith^john]mary
jones^fred

oops... was fooled into thinking the bug was on the reformat/sreformat
-- by instead a different bug! (easier to deal with!)

i had placed "a1" on the macro-attribute of the dictionary for the
"target_file".

sort/list of target_file... causes all items to appear as if they all
have the same duplicate "a1" as the first item's attribute1.