I forgot to mention, the reson for doing it that way is that *argv is left pointing to the start of the actual value for the given argument. You can then use that without regards as to where it came from... -- Jeff Lee CSNet: Jeff @ GATech ARPA: Jeff%GATech.CSNet @ CSNet-Relay.ARPA uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!jeff