Hi Mark, Thanks. I wouldn't know C if I fell over it. Until recently, the *only* language I'd ever used was (HP, GW)BASIC aside from Fortran 101, 3 decades ago! John. On 30/10/2012 2:45 AM, Mark Lawrence wrote: <SNIP> > If you're more comfortable with C you can use printf style formatting > see http://docs.python.org/2/library/stdtypes.html#string-formatting