Well, that was a simple fix. Turns out thre was a sneaky early exit in one of the functions I was using, it bailed out if it didn't see an exponent part. Sanjeev, it should work much batter now. Give it a try? -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> Love your country, but never trust its government. -- Robert A. Heinlein.