I couldn't find that getline with no. of bytes that Ray mentioned. I suppose you could use the getline that gets the whole line and then use a substring function. Not as elegant but still avoids char*. Kevin

Unfortunately, it appears that the optimization switches are still disabled with or without the compiler files in place. I don't really have any experience with optimized output in the Standard Edition. After looking through one of my Visual C++.NET project files, it looks like Optimization through the Standard IDE is a no-show. Sorry to deliver the bad news. Happy Programming and may God Bless! "Your coding practices might be buggy, but your code is always right." Internet::WWW::CodeProject::bneacetp N-Tech Productions http://www.n-tp.com/