Ping> So "34"+0 converts to a number and 34."" converts to a string Ping> (i've seen both idioms fairly often). Halleluhah! Never thought I'd get Perl programming help here! We have this nagging problem with our XML-RPC stuff. When a band or venue name consisting of all digits (like "311") name comes into our concert database server from a Perl client, it comes in as a number instead of a string. The only workaround so far was to check at all server interfaces where this might occur and call str() when we found a number. Now it looks like I can toss the problem back into the client and save a few cpu cycles on the server (and more to the point, not pay the cost of the test all the time)... Ka-Ping> Anyway, i still agree that it's best to avoid automatic Ka-Ping> coercion between numbers and strings Amen to that! Skip