Son of a gun: you're right. Fixing stuff later down in the program was what was needed.Thanks, Carl. --HarryHarry: > My specific problem was how to exit the subroutine conditionally.In your example, "... "" is unnecessary; " " (instead of ") would suffice. If you're having a problem, it's not because of ; something else is wrong. -- Carl Distefano cld@xxxxxxxxHarry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx