Hey all, so I got serial running (dunno if you remember but thanks guys! I didn't need a crystal but I did need a max232...).

what my question now is, what's the best, or, easiest? way to send multiple items via serial?

eg, I want to send 3 sets of numbers from my pc to my pic, in this case, how many unread emails do I have in my inbox.
account1 has 3
account2 has 1
account3 has 0.

should I just send the number 1-3 (signifying account or set 1-3) then wait for a second set of numbers? this seems like it has the possibility for getting messed up along the way as I'll be sending the numbers 1,2,3 for the data. from what I understand if /else doesn't work with strings so I can't say if data_in = "a" then.. blah blah

sorry if this is a silly question, thanks guys!