>>is there a quick way to inspect a text document and change all [1] to [01] and all [2] to [02] etc something along the lines of what i have set up below (which doesn't work) - or should i be looking at another approach altogether?
>>

>>cFile = Filetostr("C:\mytext.txt") 
>>
>>cFile = Strtran(cFile,Chr(202),"E") && using this code i can change only one character at a time
>>
>>cFile = strtran(cFile,"[5]","[05]")  && can i use the same approach for character string - perhaps using chrtran??
>>

>
>If:
>
>- you don't use the "[" character anywhere else
>- you always want to put a "0" after it, no matter the length of the number between "[" and "]"
>
>then you could just use STRTRAN() to replace each "[" with "[0".

unfortunately al this is not the case - i have numbers 01-99 and this only affects the first 9 numbers in which case i want to see 01 and not 1 to maintain the character count. past 09 i'm fine.

abcdefg [01] = is what i need
as opposed to submitted data which reads # abcdefg [1]

thanks for suggestion though
k