cool, thanks!

Again, as I just posted, as someone who uses the Digital Mars C++ compiler (formerly Symantec C++ and before that Zortech or the like) I never get this problem as the compiler always warns of the semi=colon. In the unlikely case where you do want a semicolon, to keep the compiler happy, you just need to insert some C comment: while (flag) /* Wait */; Paul

I believe at one point in the murky past of C++ one of the intel compilers actually had a problem where i++ was less efficient than i=i+1 due to some pipelining issue, but rumour at the time had it that this was only a problem on intel chips!