I had an entire array of strings(255x255) and had the strangest bugs creep in; garbage everywhere. To make a long story incredibly short, I used _strResource and _dontOptomizeStr (or whatever the "don't optomize strings" is called) and this went away. The key was really the _dontOptomizeStr, because that way it doesn't try to do any internal optomization(which it doesn't seem to be perfect at). HTH ~ I heart Apple ~ -- TJ Grant (tatewake@...) Inspired Software. http://inspired.netstreet.net/ Macintosh, Dos, Windows, and BeOS software solutions. Phone: 407-728-7563