Jerome Fine replies: I agree! I should have answered this as well. By translation, I meant what MACRO-11 places in the OBJ file as opposed to what Patrick used when he entered 177566' by hand using ODT - notice that the ' character makes 177566' VERY different from just 177566 by itself - which is what happens when @#XBUF is used instead of XBUF by itself. I understand your answer. Under normal situations (when MACRO-11 source is translated and the actual code is placed into an OBJ file which is then LINKed), both ways are acceptable. BUT, Patrick was setting up the program via ODT (see line four). If Patrick did not realize what the ' character in the string 177566' meant, perhaps he just put 177566 instead so that the three word instruction became: 001000 Mov #110,XBUF 012767 000110 177566 which, of course, is NOT what Patrick intended. However 001000 MovB #110,@#XBUF 112737 000110 177566 is correct and does the job. So it is not that the first method is incorrect, but for some it might be confusing. My personal opinion is that the MACRO-11 program should make the situation plain, but unfortunately I suspect that MACRO-11 will never be modified by the present owners. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine -- If you attempted to send a reply and the original e-mail address has been discontinued due a high volume of junk e-mail, then the semi-permanent e-mail address can be obtained by replacing the four characters preceding the 'at' with the four digits of the current year.