Not a prob, I was in fact, just starting the day, and clearly had too little coffee in my system to type, much less proof. We had just been playing around with javascript to see what happens when you don't declare a variable versus when you declare it and don't assign a value - how it affects checking for undefined, not-undefined, null, etc. And, Yes, I typically write a lot more in T-SQL, but I also use VB, VB.NET, et al in my daily work - hence my disclaimer about not writing a lot of C#. I'm always careful when checking for nulls, so when I see comparison operator my hair stands up a bit. Initially, to me, the code looked as though someone had somehow had a bad experience populating the list from using the "new List();" call, and so put in a safety-catch (if you will) to try again if necessary. Or, perhaps, the second part was already there, and someone later came along and added the first line... I'm sure they though it was right at the time. Who knows! Thanks for the note KP. Cheers and happy coding, Mark
