Ive been running the string_methods tag (term?) under CVS for quite some time now, and it seems to work perfectly. I admit that I havent stressed the string methods much, but I feel confident that Barry's patches havent broken existing string code. Also, I find using that tag with CVS a bit of a pain. A few updates have been checked into the main branch, and you tend to miss these (its a pity CVS can't be told "only these files are affected by this tag, so the rest should follow the main branch." I know I can do that personally, but that means I personally need to know all files possibly affected by the branch.) Anyway, I digress... I propose that these extensions be merged into the main branch. The main advantage is that we force more people to bash on it, rather than allowing them to make that choice <wink>. If the Unicode type is also considered highly experimental, we can make a new tag for that change, but that is really quite independant of the string methods. Mark.