weird characters, cursor control, bells and whistles I believe the "\n", "\t" and other conventions are linked to the printf function in C. For example if you want to a print a non scrolling list of lines processed you could send out lines to printf a 5 character number and then use "\b\b\b\b\b" to reposition the cursor at the start of the number so that the next print command overwrites it. The effect is handy with terminals kind of a pain on a LA34 where the printing is overwritten on the paper Mike mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu