Problem solved. The problem occurs when the assignment of a CFMutableStringRef (uniStr) is handed a CFStringRef as the return value from the function. I actually changed "uniStr" to CFStringRef and reused it fours time this time with no errors. Probably not the recommended way to do it but this is for testing code. CFStringAppend( mutableStr, uniStr ) If you are using something like the above code to Append a string it appears to be OK to append a CFStringRef onto a CFMutableStringRef without generating any errors. Last run was error free. Max Taylor The MaxClass Guy