Thanks so much amgen, i want to give this a try, looks much simpler. i am trying to convert the flowchart you posted to code, i will let u know how it turns out.

i will see if my original trial will even compile at all :-), then i will make comparisms

i want to be able to write more efficient code. one nice tool that has helped me to compare execution times of various methods of coding is DARREL TAYLOR's instruction time calculation code...