>Try the following:
>

>oRegEx = NEWOBJECT("VBScript.RegExp")
>oRegEx.Pattern = "\[(\d)\]"
>cFile = oRegEx.Replace(cFile, "[0$1]")
>

thanks rob - no effect i'm afraid but i'm wondering if this is addressing the change i am looking for (I am trying to understand your replace code "[0$1]" and have modified it a couple of times without success.

basically the text looks something like this

asdfghjkl [1]

and i want it to look like this

asdfghjkl [01]


thanks
k